


Repeated Measures

by Weevilo707



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Gen, Minor Character Death, Plot Twists, So Many Plot Twists, the kids forget the game that is, the scratch, the trolls remember
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-01 13:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 65,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2774558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weevilo707/pseuds/Weevilo707
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repeated Measures ANOVA test: appropriate to use when having the same subjects tested three or more times in order to see if a treatment has had any affect.  </p><p>When The Scratch results in the trolls finding themselves on Earth with the kids having no recollection of the game, and have instead lived normal lives up to this point, it seems to be a result of a simple glitch in the system. As they unwittingly start peeling back the layers of this new reality, it becomes apparent that there is much more wrong with this universe than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue- Rinse and Repeat

He was not going to cry, okay. Yeah sure, it was really sad and all, but he wasn’t going to cry. There was a distinct feeling in his gut that Karkat was probably bawling his eyes out on the other side of the computer screen, and the idea actually made him smile a bit. The guy liked to act like he was so tough, but it was pretty clear once you got past all the screaming that he was actually a huge emotional dork.  
John was really going to miss talking to him.

Oh no, so not going down that path. If anything he was good at distracting himself from things like this. If he started thinking about it that’s what was going to lead to tears and no one else on his side was crying yet so he most definitely was not going to be the first one. Even if their whole plan was a little bit terrifying and probably counted as suicidal (but what plan with Rose and Dave at the forefront wouldn’t be?) and the best case scenario involved most likely never getting to talk to some of the people that he had started to consider really good friends. Even if they were aliens he’d never been able to meet face to face in the first place, and some of the ones that he’d gotten closest to were already dead the whole thing still sucked.

CG: HEY ASSHOLE, ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME ANYMORE?

John blinked a few times (definitely not to hold back any sort of tears, most certainly not) and turned his attention back to the computer screen. In the short few moments he had spaced out, a new giant wall of grey text had appeared on his Pesterchum screen. Quickly skimming the messages, it seemed like Karkat was simply going over the plan for what was probably the millionth time in just the past couple hours. Smiling, John started to reply.

EB: yeah dude, you make it pretty hard not to.  
EB: and don’t worry so much, we totally have everything under control on our end.  
EB: um, at least i think we do anyway.  
EB: you guys are good to go too, aren’t you?

He tried to suppress the unease he felt for the trolls. Rose said that was they were doing was very tricky, and there wasn’t any way they could be certain that it would work. It didn’t seem like there would be a way to check afterwards, either. John wasn’t all that sure how it was supposed to work much as well, and as far as any of them could tell this definitely wasn’t something that was normal to the game. 

Of course, not many of the things that had gone on in their session had been, but resetting two universes at once seemed like it could really go wrong in a very large number of ways, if you were to ask him. 

Looking up, he could see a slight sheen over Rose’s eyes, the light of her computer screen reflecting the water that had built up in them. She wasn’t crying yet though, and John wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen her actually shed any tears before, not even when her mother died and all that other stuff happened. They really had ended up getting close to the trolls, hadn’t they? Even still, John turned away from her, not wanting to think about how final this all was and have it sink in even more. 

Glancing over at Dave instead, it was kind of hard to tell just how much this was affecting him, since the chances of him taking off those ridiculous shades and actually showing some emotions was literally in the negative. His mouth was definitely turned down into a frown though, despite how hard he was probably trying to keep his ‘cool kid’ face up. Jade’s expression kept changing rapidly, from laughing one minute to looking irritated (probably because of Karkat doing or saying something dumb) to genuinely upset and back to happy again. 

The Pesterchum ding alerted him back to his conversation with Karkat. It seemed like he was the only one constantly looking up and down, but he couldn’t help it. He was feeling anxious and scared and excited he just couldn't stay focused on one thing all that well.

CG: AS GOOD AS WE’RE GOING TO BE, I SUPPOSE.  
CG: I MEAN, WE DID EVERYTHING YOU TOLD US TO DO, SO NOW WE JUST WAIT, I GUESS?  
CG: NOT LIKE THAT’S WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING ON THIS ROCK THIS WHOLE FUCKING TIME, FOR HELL FROTHINGS SAKE.  
EB: okay, that’s good.  
EB: we’re just waiting here now too.  
EB: you guys said that the timeline cuts out in a few minutes for us right?  
CG: YEAH, AND HOPEFULLY THAT’S A GOOD THING AND NOT BECAUSE YOU BULGE FUCKING IDIOTS MANAGE TO SCREW US ALL TO HELL ONE LAST TIME.  
EB: yeah, hopefully.  
EB: hey.  
EB: karkat?  
CG: OH GOD, WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT TO GET ON ABOUT NOW? I CAN ALREADY FEEL A POUNDING IN MY OH SO ABUSED THINK PAN FROM WHATEVER MUSCLE BEAST SHIT YOU’RE ABOUT TO PUT FORTH.  
EB: stop being such a dick dude.  
EB: i was just wondering if you think we’ll ever get to talk to each other again after this.  
CG: JOHN.  
CG: IF WE MANAGE BY SOME MIRACULOUS MEANS TO SURVIVE WITH THIS HAIR THINK PANNED PLAN AND NOT BE COMPLETELY OBLITERATED BY THE SCRATCH, WE WOULD THEN BE SITUATED IN COMPLETELY DIFFERENT UNIVERSES WITH NO HELL GAME CONNECTING US THROUGH A SHITTY CHAT CLIENT.  
CG: IN WHAT WAY COULD YOU CONCEIVABLY IMAGINE THAT WE WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO TALK AGAIN AFTER THIS?  
EB: i know, i know, okay?  
EB: i was just kind of hoping, alright.  
EB: i mean aren’t you sad at all? it just kind of sucks, cause i like to think that we’re friends at least.  
CG: OH FUCKING HELL NO JOHN EGBERT. WE ARE NOT DOING THIS.  
CG: WE ARE NOT ABOUT TO GET INTO OUR FEELINGS WITH JUST A FEW MINUTES BEFORE WHAT COULD VERY WELL BE COMPLETE OBLIVION.  
EB: heh, i bet you really are all sad and bent up about this and just don’t want to admit it.  
EB: you’re totally crying, aren’t you?  
CG: FUCK YOU.  
EB: i was so right!  
EB: it’s okay karkat, everyone else is sad too, you don’t have to hide it.  
EB: even if dave is trying to too. ya know, you two are a lot more alike than i thought.  
CG: I FUCKING SWEAR JOHN, IF THE LAST THING YOU SAY TO ME IS COMPARING ME TO THAT POMPUS DOUCHBAG CONSIDER ALL OF YOUR HUMAN FRIENDSHIP OFFICIALLY REVOKED.  
CG: THAT’S IT, NO MORE FRIENDSHIP. WELL, IT WAS HORRIBLE WHILE IT LASTED, HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT. NOW FUCK OFF INTO THE OBLIVION LIKE THE REST OF PARADOX SPACE.  
EB: jeeze, calm down dude. fine, you’re not like dave.  
EB: you two have absolutely nothing in common, if i didn’t know any better i’d say you even had different classes.  
CG: OKAY, MUCH BETTER. I SUPPOSE SINCE YOU’RE TRYING SO HARD AND THERE’S ONLY A FEW MOMENTS LEFT, YOU CAN HAVE YOUR PRECIOUS HUMAN FRIENDSHIP BACK.  
EB: oh thank god, i was so worried dude, you have no idea. like SO scared man, you really upset me.  
CG: OKAY, NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO STOP BEING A RAGING DOUCHE.  
EB: heh, fine sorry. i guess i’m still just a little nervous about all of this.  
EB: gosh, time has to be running really low now; we should probably start saying bye and stuff.  
EB: oh, and if this does work and stuff, if you ever see vriska again could you tell her bye for me, and um, i guess sorry for not being able to myself?  
CG: FUCKING FINE. BUT WE REALLY DON’T KNOW IF THIS WILL BRING ANYONE BACK FROM THE GOD DAMN DEAD.  
EB: i know, but just in case can never hurt.  
CG: YEAH, WHATEVER.  
EB: yeah. um.  
CG:…  
EB:…  
CG: WOW, WE REALLY FUCKING SUCK AT THIS.  
EB: yeah, we really do.  
EB: bye i guess, or something.  
EB: i’m gonna miss being able to talk to you and stuff?  
CG: FUCKING HELL JOHN, THIS ISN’T SOME SORT OF HEARTFELT CONFESSION. I MEAN SHITS DAMN IT, WE SHOULD PROBABLY BE FOCUSING ON THE THING THAT IS MOST LIKELY GOING TO KILL US IN A FEW FEEBLE MOMENTS INSTEAD OF GETTING ALL SAPPY ABOUT GOODBYES.  
CG: LIKE SERIOUSLY, SHOULDN’T YOU BE HAVING THESE KINDS OF CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR FRIENDS THAT ARE WITH YOU AT THIS VERY MOMENT?  
CG: IN FACT, I COMMAND YOU TO GO DO THAT RIGHT NOW. GO DRAG JADE AWAY FROM HER FUCKING EAR COVER COMPUTERS SO SHE WILL LEAVE ME ALONE AND HAVE YOUR HEARTFELT GOODBYE THERE.  
EB: i’m gonna talk to them too!  
EB: we just all figured we’d take the time to say bye to you guys first, since the connection will probably be one of the first things to go and all.  
EB: plus, we’re at least trying to stay positive about this and hope that it won’t just instantly kill us all.  
EB: i still think you just don’t want to talk about it because you’re upset.  
CG: THOSE ARE BASELESS ACUSATIONS. I’M FUCKING FINE, YOU HEAR ME EGBERT?  
CG: I MEAN SERIOUSLY, IT’S NOT LIKE I HAVEN’T ALREADY LOST A GOOD HALF OF MY FRIENDS, WHY WOULD THIS BOTHER ME? FUCK, I’M PRETTY MUCH IMMUNE TO THIS KIND OF SHIT BY NOW.  
CG: HELL, THIS IS NON-OBJECTIVELY A MUCH BETTER WAY TO LOSE FRIENDS THAN A LOT OF THE SHIT I’VE ALREADY GONE THROUGH. EVEN GETTING TO SAY GOODBYE, LIKE GOD FUCKING DAMN, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?  
CG: LADY LUCK MUST BE SHINING HER SHIT SPLITTING MAGIC DUST ALL OVER US.  
CG: OH WAIT. SHE’S DEAD. NEVER FUCKING MIND.  
EB: okay, sorry i said that.  
EB: but um, glad you’re taking it well then?  
CG: YEAH, SURE.  
CG: SHIT, YOU CUT OUT REALLY FUCKING SOON.  
CG: I  
CG: FUCKING HELL  
EB: heh, i guess this is really goodbye then.  
EB: if this does work, good luck back on your planet and everything.  
CG: GOD DAMN IT.  
CG: YEAH, GOOD LUCK TO YOU TOO.  
CG: AND I  
CG: FUCK, NEVER MIND, GOOD BYE AND ALL THAT.  
carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling ectobiologist at 10:20am

EB: karkat?

John signed as he pushed the computer a little ways off of his lap. Reaching his hand up, he noticed something wet sliding down his cheek and quickly wiped away several tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. Shoot, guess he was more torn up about this than he had been letting on to Karkat. Or really himself for that matter, but we weren’t going into that right now, or ever hopefully. 

Looking up to the other three children, they were all slowly pulling away from their own computing devices. Well, except for Dave, since he was using his ishades and good luck getting him away from those. But even still it was clear that he had been cut off from whoever he’d been speaking to as well, most likely Terezi if he thought about it. 

Jade was also wiping away a few stray tears, and he wasn’t quite able to tell but it sure looked like Dave was blinking pretty rapidly behind his shades. Rose was frowning slightly as she shut her laptop with a little more force than was probably necessary. 

Willing a smile onto his face, John pushed himself into a standing position. They were all a few feet away from the Beat Mesa, and had long since made easy work of the hordes of monsters that came to try to stop them from starting to scratch. Rose, Dave and Jade all stood quickly after him, each still showing varying degrees of emotions from being disconnected from the trolls. 

They all wanted this hell game to be over, but it just sucked that they had to stay in here long enough to grow attached before having to have it ripped away from them. Just another hard lesson the Game was probably trying to teach them, but what that lesson was John had no idea, and frankly, he had stopped caring at this point.

Turning towards the beat mesa, John took a deep breath. Okay, for real though, this was it. He could see that the scratch was almost complete now. Time to put the last parts of this crazy mission into play and try not to die doing so.

They were doing this man.

They’re making this happen.  
\---

Karkat stared at the screen in front of him through eyes much blurrier than he would ever admit to anyone. The viewports he’d had on the humans had switched to black a moment ago, as well as any attempt at being able to contact them. 

He was fine. Perfectly fucking dandy. Fuck John and Jade for getting on his case, they had no way of knowing if he was crying (which he was, quite a bit actually. He hurriedly started wiping his face on his sleeve before anyone around him took too much notice). 

The other trolls, those still alive that was, had gathered up on the top of the meteor. There really wasn’t much else for them to do, having already gone through and completed all of the convoluted instructions that had been given to them from both the humans and several ghosts. 

There was nothing else to do but wait calmly and fucking fuck fuck, this wasn’t going to work was it? Oh god they were all going to die. Why the hell did he ever think listening to a plan that Rose Lalonde had a hand in would be a good idea? 

“Karkat, calm the hell down,” Terezi called over to him, and the troll instantly spun on his heels to face her, indignant.

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m perfectly fucking calm! I think I’m even chiller than that douche canoe you were just talking to! We’re all about to die, why wouldn’t I be calm?!” he yelled, speaking nearly a mile a minute and arms going in a myriad of directions. He was pretty sure he was shaking, and his breath was starting to get short.

“Karkat I think you should have more faith in the human’s plan. Rose assured me that they would do everything in their power to get the scratch to permeate our session as well,” Kanaya attempted to reassure him. 

The troll slowly managed to nod, trying to get himself to actually calm the hell down. So what if they all died, it wasn’t like a whole bunch of them hadn’t already. It would be fine. Everything would be just fucking  
fine. Also yeah maybe Kanaya was right and maybe they wouldn’t die and that would be pretty freaking dandy wouldn’t it? (he tried to ignore the fact that he would just end up back on his old planet if all went well, which meant he would only have a few sweeps left to live before someone noticed his mutation but that should really be the last of his worries at the moment.)

“Okay, okay, maybe you’re right, but I still don’t even understand how they’re planning to do that? I mean, how the fuck would that even work?” he asked, hearing Terezi groan before Kanaya was able to answer him.

“Just be happy that we might be able to survive this, jeeze Karkat,” the teal blood moaned. Karkat snapped his jaw shut, about to turn on her again when something started to feel wrong.  
Oh god oh god something was very wrong. 

It started as a sort of dull buzzing, but before he was able to process it everything exploded. Well, maybe not literally exploded, although there was definitely a chance that it was a literal fucking explosion, but all he could see was green and yellow and static and fucking fuck it hurt. 

That was it. The kids screwed up, he knew it. They were going to die and fuck all of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are starting to get somewhere now. Also, I would really love it if anyone reading would let me know how they feel about chapter sizes, because I had to work to get it this length, it was originally about double this, and chances are they're just going to get longer from here. If that really bothers people though I can try to put in a decent effort at keeping them at least thing length.
> 
> Once again, thanks for reading and let me know what you think.


	2. Chapter 1- First Contact

John groaned as he slumped over in his bed. Did he have school today? No? No, he did not have school today. Rolling over, he quickly made it his intent to stay in bed for another couple of hours at the very least, regardless of what time it might have been.

Before the boy was able to fall back to sleep however, the loud humming of a lawnmower from the neighbors started boring into his brain. Dang it, who did that kind of stuff on a Saturday morning? It just wasn’t fair. Slowly, he slid out of his bed, lying on the floor with the blanket still wrapped around him for a few moments before reaching around for his glasses.

Blinking into the light shining in from his window, John pushed himself up before walking over and falling into his computer chair. Turning the machine on, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he waited for Pesterchum to boot up. 

Once the program was up and running, he clicked on the highlighted screen name letting him know his chum was online. Looking at the clock, he was pretty surprised to see that she was awake, since it would be nearly five in the morning for her, but then again you could never know with that girl’s schedule.

ectoBiologist started pestering gardenGnostic at 8:37am  
EB: jade!  
EB: jade! my neighbor won’t stop mowing his stupid lawn and it’s early and i want to sleep.  
EB: use science to make him stop.  
GG: well good morning to you too John!  
GG: and sorry, but I don’t have anything that can disable a lawn mower from across the ocean  
EB: your science sucks then.  
GG: You suck!  
GG: anyway, what’s up? any super awesome prank plans for today?  
EB: eh, not really. or maybe i have some, but i can’t remember on account of the fact that i should be asleep right now.  
GG: big baby! it’s not that early!  
EB: yeah, maybe for you, but us normal people actually like to sleep in sometimes.  
GG: it’s still not that early you have to wake up even earlier for school don’t you?  
EB: well yeah, but it’s the weekend jade. the weekend is sacred.  
EB: but you don’t understand that because you never had to go to school in the first place.  
EB: lucky.  
GG: no way school sounds like so much fun!  
GG: i would love to be able to learn with other kids  
EB: yeah maybe, but you don’t learn.  
EB: you just sit there and listen to the teachers talk about things you don’t actually care about.  
GG: whine whine whine!

John rolled his eyes before returning to talking to his friend. They had met on some forums years ago, and for some reason never stopped talking. She felt like a sister to him after all these years, and even though some aspects of her life seemed pretty outrageous, he tended to believe her. She just didn’t seem like the kind of person who would lie, or who would be able to keep up such elaborate ones for so long.

The two ended up talking for a few hours, John only leaving momentarily to grab some breakfast before Jade had to head out, saying something about needing to feed her dog and get a couple errands done with her grandpa. 

John didn’t really like to admit it, but there wasn’t really anyone else on his Pesterchum for him to talk to. A few kids at school had added him over the years to get work done on group projects and the like, but they weren’t anyone John talked to on a regular basis. So once Jade left he quickly closed the program to start mindlessly surfing the internet like any rational teenage boy would do.

The rest of the day went pretty much like that, with the only interruption being from his father making him some lunch and then dinner that night. But it was whatever; most teenagers spent the majority of their free time on the web. It was starting to get cold outside anyway, and the stuff he used to do outside he was definitely starting to grow out of. Except for maybe the tire swing, those things are pretty awesome no matter how old you are.

The Pesterchum dig alerted him to an on-coming message. Jade again, wanting to talk about how her day went. Apparently she and her grandpa were doing some cool sciency stuff with some things by a lagoon where they live. He didn’t really understand a lot of the stuff she talked about when she got into technical terms like she had a habit of doing. It wasn’t that he was dumb by any means, but Jade always seemed to be on a whole other level. He was pretty sure that no matter what she said, she would actually hate the school part of school; she was just too smart for anything they could try to teach her. 

As usual, Jade had to get off first because time zones. A couple of hours later (it’s amazing how lost you can get on Wikipedia, he didn’t even remember getting on there in the first place) he finally pulled himself away from his computer and flopped down into his bed. His dad had peaked into his room several times throughout the day, mainly to ask if he was hungry, before finally saying goodnight at around 11 o’clock.

John sighed as he pulled the covers over himself. Something felt wrong, but it was kind of this feeling he was used to by now. It was easy enough to ignore when he was busy with school work and such, but on weekends when he had nothing to really do, and don’t even get started on summer, it became rather glaringly obvious. But he didn’t even know what it was. It was just. This feeling that something was missing. He didn’t want to talk to Jade about it, he didn’t really think she’d understand all that much. 

He was probably just being a melodramatic mopey teenager. But it didn’t feel like that. He didn’t know what it felt like though, but he knew that something was off. That there were like, these missing spaces in his life that he couldn’t identify but could tell was there.

Whatever. It was stupid, he was being stupid. If he wanted to really get down to it, he was probably just lonely or depressed or something. But it sucked admitting that to himself, so he definitely wasn’t going to admit that to anyone else. And he really didn’t have it that bad. He wasn’t bullied at school or anything like that, he just wasn’t really talked to either. Jade was his friend and that was about it, and he probably wouldn’t ever be able to even meet her with the whole living in the middle of the ocean thing. 

Thinking about this stuff made him sad though, it was probably a better idea to just ignore it. He’d make friends eventually, even if he’d tried to before but it never felt right, they weren’t the right people so he didn’t want to be friends with them. He’d find the right ones though. It was just something he had to wait for.

He was tired of waiting though. He’d been tired of waiting for a really long time. 

There wasn’t anything he could do to fix that though, so he would just have to suck it up and wait some more.

But for what, he didn’t have the slightest idea.

John woke up late on Sunday morning, finding that his dad had already left for work by the time he went downstairs for breakfast. Or well brunch he supposed, it was almost one at this point but that didn’t bother him too much. It was the weekend and school would rip him up out of bed at an ungodly hour tomorrow, so he deserved to sleep now while he still could. 

Walking back up to his room with a sandwich, he placed his plate and drink on his desk as he booted up his computer. Logging onto Pesterchum, Jade wasn’t online, so instead he went to mess around with a few codes he’d been working on. He was pretty bad at it, but when he looked back at some of the stuff he used to try a few years ago when he was just getting into the whole thing, there was definitely progress, so he was just going to take that as it was. 

About an hour later a ding went off, alerting him to an incoming message. When he flipped over to Pesterchum though, it wasn’t the familiar green text he’d been expecting. 

arachnidsGrip started pestering ectoBiologist at 2:23pm  
AG: Joooooooohn!  
AG: Happy to see me?  
AG: :::;)  
EB: um, who is this?  
AG: Rude!  
AG: Do you have any idea what I had to go through to message you?  
AG: Pro8a8ly not as much as you’re thinking actually 8ut it was still a hassle.  
EB: i think you might have the wrong person.  
EB: we’ve never spoken before.  
AG: John now is not the time for one of your shitty pranks.  
AG: I’m going to 8e honest here; we’re kind of in a crisis.  
AG: How do I get to your human hive?  
AG: I only kiiiiiiiind of remem8er from the dream 8u88le tour you gave me of your neigh8orhood.  
EB: wow absolutely none of that made any sense.  
EB: also what’s with the 8 thing?  
EB: makes it kind of hard to read.  
AG: Oh my god John I am not going through this again.  
AG: And quite whining, it is not that hard.  
AG: Now we really need to get to your hive  
AG: also sorry 8ut I have to 8ring a couple of tooooooootal nerds along with me.  
EB: i’m not telling you where i live!  
EB: i don’t even know who you are!  
EB: if that’s even what you mean by hive i guess.  
AG: Why is it that every time I try to meet you, you don’t remem8er anything a8out me????????  
AG: Talk a8out rotten luck.  
EB: it’s probably because we’ve never met before.  
AG: yes we haaaaaaaaave!  
AG: you’re just 8eing an ass and won’t remem8er.  
AG: Like usual.  
EB: i’m not being an ass i’m just not giving out my address to random people who message me online.  
AG: I’m not random.  
AG: I’m a very gr8 friend of yours who died helping you restart the universe!  
AG: You should 8e crying in joy at getting to talk to me again.  
EB: oh man you got me there.  
EB: of course i remember you now.  
EB: the universe ghost how could i forget.  
AG: Asshole!  
AG: ::::(  
EB: the sad spider face is not going to make me give you my address.  
AG: hey dou2hebag  
EB: why are you using twos now?  
AG: thii2 ii2n’t VS you iidiiot.  
EB: wow that is even harder to read than the eight thing.  
AG: we’ll be there iin a moment.  
AG: later nerd.  
arachnidsGrip ceased pestering ectoBiologist at 2:35pm

“Uhh,” John muttered, staring at his computer screen in confusion. That was… really weird. Like really, really weird. John quickly made sure to block that specific chumhandle before checking if Jade was online yet to tell her about what just happened. Unfortunately she wasn’t, and so the boy decided to get up to throw the trash from his earlier brunch away. He just needed to move around a bit to get over whatever that was there.

When he got back to his computer, there was another message waiting for him, and John frowned as he looked it over. It looked like it was from those same trolls, although the writing was a different color and they were using different numbers this time, it was all pretty much the same. Some cagey stuff about needing some help for a ‘CR1S1S’ as this one put it. John didn’t even bother replying this time, instead quickly blocking the person without a second thought. 

It was maybe twenty minutes later when John heard aggressive pounding on his front door. He didn’t move from his chair though, because that definitely did not sound like his dad or a normal salesman. If it was that person on Pesterchum earlier he was not answering it, especially with how angry the banging sounded. The door was locked, and if they tried to break in then he was calling the police.

A second later he started to hear something knocking much closer than the front door. Turning towards the sound, he fell out of his desk chair when he noticed someone glaring at him through his window. His second story window what the fuck?!

“Jooooooooohn! Stop being an ass and let us in already!” came the muffled voice through the pane of glass. John quickly pushed himself up off of the floor, taking a few tentative steps towards the window.  
It was a girl, and she had grey face paint on it looked like, and a bright orange outfit and matching strange orange horns. And wings. He could see the fluttering of something blue behind her, keeping her afloat. 

“What the fuck?” he managed to ask, walking toward the window some more. The girl rolled her eyes, seeming annoyed at his complete bafflement. 

“Not through the window you numbnut, the front door!” she called, and all John found himself capable of doing was nodding, starting out of his room to go open the door for her. He was just too confused and curious not to at this point. She was flying, for fuck’s sake! Plus if she really wanted to she could probably just break his window, and he didn’t think the police would believe him if he said a fairy broke into his house. 

When he unlocked the door, there were three people standing there, the girl from before, now on the ground with her wings out behind her, and two others. They also had grey face paint, although looking now he could see it covered most of their bodies, and orange horns, although their horns were shaped differently from the girl’s, and neither of them had any wings. There also seemed to be red and blue sparks coming off of one of them for some reason. 

“Uhh,” John stumbled out, really not quite sure how to handle this situation at all. The girl in front of him huffed, crossing her arms and leaning on the doorframe.

“Jeeeeeeeeze John, you were a lot cooler about meeting an alien in the dream bubbles,” she said, and all he could do was stare at her, because that made absolutely no sense. “What, you’re not even going to invite  
us in?” she asked after a moment. 

“Um sorry, I’m not used to having strange people who can fly and are dressed like Howie Mandel from Little Monster show up at my door,” he managed to say after a moment, stepping out of the way to let them inside. Once they were in and he’d shut the door, John started to think that might not have been the best thing to do, but he was really having a hard time thinking straight. Or thinking at all, for that matter.

“Yeah, yeah whatever, let me use your computer, need to see if I can contact any of the others,” one of the boys said. He was wearing what looked like 3-D glasses for some reason, and he had four sharp little horns on his head. 

“It’s in my room upstairs. Wait, others?” John asked, but the guy was already walking away from him and up the stairs. 

“Just ignore him, Sollux is such a bore! Come here, we have to get you to remember something, again,” the girl said, grabbing him by the arm and making him sit on the couch, standing in front of him afterwards and staring down intimidatingly. The last of the three was also sitting on the couch, and John had almost hit his head on his horn when he’d sat down. The boy looked over at him, waving slightly as he did.

“Uh, hey,” he said, and John hesitantly greeted him back. 

“Hey, don’t get distracted!” the girl in front of his barked. When he turned to look back, he noticed her wings were gone, and her outfit had changed as well. It was now similar to the other two kids, a black shirt with a symbol on it and grey pants, although she also had a jacket as well.

“What happened to your fairy outfit?” he asked, and once again she rolled her eyes at him. It was then that he noticed one of them was rather strange, with what looked like multiple pupils. 

“I told you not to get distracted! We have serious business to attend to here John,” she told him.

“Can you at least tell me your names? Or why you can fly? Or what’s with the weird costumes? Or anything?” he asked. 

“Ugg, fiiiiiiiine! I’m Vriska, that’s Tavros and the other guy is Sollux. I can fly because I’m awesome and these aren’t costumes, happy now?” she told him. 

“Not really, I’m still pretty confused,” he told her truthfully. Was she insisting that they were actually magical creatures? Because really, that would be totally awesome, but didn’t seem like something that would actually happen, especially not like this, with them just barging into his house one day, demanding he remember things that had never happened. There needed to be more fanfare, with like, him finding some ancient amulet or reading from a magic book or finding an alien spaceship or something.

“Which is why we need to get you to remember,” she continued to push. 

“But I didn’t forget anything,” John insisted. Although, thinking about it, he really wouldn’t know if he had forgotten something, would he? But still, magical creatures or monsters or whatever it was they called themselves, he was pretty sure he would at least have some sort of vague feeling of de ja vu. 

“Yes, you have, it was probably because that whole scratch plan you all apparently had fucked up big time. Although it did seem to bring us back to life, so good job on that part, I guess,” Vriska told him, once again confusing John even more than he thought possible. 

“I have no idea what any of that meant. You died?” he asked, he knew she had mentioned something like that before, but that was before he had actually seen one of them flying, and although that wasn’t making him immediately believe everything they were saying, it was definitely making him consider what they were saying a little bit more than he was before.

“Yes, I died, so did Tavros. I think maybe Sollux did? Or half died or something? I don’t know, who cares. We’re getting away from the point John,” she told him.

“What is the point? What am I supposed to be remembering here?” he asked, because he was really at a loss here. Everything they said just managed to make him even more confused and he was starting to lose it. Or at least, he needed to figure out what they were talking about pretty fast before his dad got home and asked why he had a bunch of strange people in costumes over without permission.

“The game, duh! The whole thing that’s the cause of all this, it’s pretty simple,” Vriska told him, although he highly doubted it was as simple as she was trying to make it out to be. 

“What game are you talking about? Is this some sort of weird role play thing? Is that why you guys have the costumes? I think you have the wrong house,” he told her, and Vriska groaned, running her hands through her hair. 

“No it’s not a role play thing, I mean SGRUB, or SBURB or whatever, ringing any bells?” she asked, and John just shook his head. None of that even jingled a little bit. The boy, what had she said his name was, Tavros? Well, he started shifting slightly next to him, although he seemed careful not to hit John with the large horns sticking out of the sides of his head. 

“Uh, I don’t think he’s going to remember,” he muttered out, causing Vriska to turn and glare at him.

“He’ll remember, he just needs some helpful persuasion! I don’t see you being very helpful Tavros, maybe you should try something instead of just assuming it’s not going to work,” she snapped at him, and the boy frowned, muttering under his breath slightly. John wasn’t quite sure what he said, but it sounded like it was something about different universes and it’s probably not even the same John.

“I’m not really sure I’m going to remember though, this doesn’t really make any sense. Are you guys really aliens? Or monsters? Or what was it you said you were again?” John asked.

“Aliens John, this is not that hard to remember. And you are going to remember, don’t start picking up that kind of defeatist behavior from this loser, you are better than that,” she told him. 

“Okay, you’re an alien, that’s cool, I guess. Um, should we be letting that other guy stay up in my room alone for this long? Is he gonna mess up my computer?” he asked, Vriska shrugged, not really seeming all that worried about it. John supposed that could be a good thing, but it might also mean she just didn’t care if his stuff got messed up. 

“Eh, he’s probably fiiiiiiiine. Chances are he’ll make your computer run better by the time he’s done with it,” she told him. 

“Oh, well okay then, but I still don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I’m not remembering anything, and my dad’ll be home in a couple of hours,” John told them, just now starting to realize that he had people who were very well potentially aliens, and his dad would be home soon. 

“What, your weird human man lusus? Is that a problem?” she asked, and John had to just assume she knew what he meant.

“Um, yeah? And yes, because he’ll make you leave, and if you really are aliens then it’s really important that we keep you hidden,” John told them.

“Uh, why is it important for us to stay hidden?” Tavros asked.

“Because, if it’s found out that you’re aliens then the government will want to catch you and do experiments on you and stuff to find out what you’re made of and then they’ll dissect you and I’ll have to go on a daring mission to rescue you guys before it’s too late,” John told them, actually starting to get excited over the idea a bit, although he didn’t want to get them in danger, just the idea of doing all the super cool rescuing stuff. That would be pretty awesome.

“John, that sounds like one of your dumb human movies,” Vriska said, rolling her eyes.

“Wait you’ve seen earth human movies?” John asked.

“Yes, you showed me a few back before we reset the universe, I’ll admit they were better than I expected,” she told him, and John smiled getting pretty excited about all of this. He still really didn’t believe them, but it was fun to pretend. Plus he didn’t really have than many people to talk to about movies, Jade didn’t really watch all that many and even when she did she didn’t seem too into talking about them afterwards. 

“Cool! Which ones did I show you?” he asked.

“We are getting away from the point again John! We can talk about your not-so-shitty movies after we figure this entire thing out,” Vriska told him.

“VS! TV! EB! KK wants to talk to you all,” a voice yelled down from upstairs. 

“Urg, what does that doofus want now? He’s in this universe too? I guess that means everyone is then, that’s um, probably a good thing,” Vriska said.

“Who’s KK?” John asked, standing up off the couch to head to his room. Vriska ignored him for a moment, instead staring down Tavros who remained on the couch, not appearing like he was about to move for some reason. Before John could ask what the matter was, Vriska grabbed the other boy, hefting him over her shoulder before starting towards the stairs. 

“No one all that important, just a shouty asshole who likes to think he’s the leader,” Vriska said, heading up the stairs with Tavros twisting around slightly over her shoulder. 

“Uh, is this really necessary? I could just stay down here,” he said, although Vriska didn’t seem very intent on actually answering him. She must be pretty strong to carry that guy all the way up the stairs with one arm, but even still, John made sure to run around them once they were in the hallway in order to open the door to his room just in case. The girl gracelessly heaped Tavros onto the bed once they were up there, after which he managed to push himself up into a more respectable position. John wondered vaguely if he should even ask what all of that was about. 

“Wow VS, you really could have just asked,” Sollux said, barely sparing the three a glance as they came into the room. He was situated on John’s computer, a chat box and several files open. 

“Psh, as if I need any help carrying that dead weight around,” she said, and John believed her, it certainly didn’t seem like she had any trouble, in fact, he kind of thought that two people would have just made the whole thing more complicated, especially since the other boy didn’t really look like he was all that strong. 

“I don’t think I’m dead weight,” Tavros muttered, but John didn’t pay him much mind as he started over to where Sollux was typing away at his computer. 

“Um, what are you doing?” he asked, trying to read over the Pesterchum conversation. Whoever he was talking to, they sure did love the caps lock button. Rows upon rows of large grey text was lining the screen, actually making attempting to skim over the thing a little daunting, not to mention the way Sollux typed really wasn’t all that much better comprehension wise. 

“Just listening to KK bitch about what’s going on right now. They want to talk to you though,” he told John, pushing away from the computer once he was finished sending whatever he’d been typing to this KK person. “So have at it,” he said, and John nodded, signing into his own pesterchum and almost instantly assaulted with several messages, although not from whom he thought it would be. He’d expected angry looking grey text to fill up his screen, but instead it was a familiar bright green.

gardenGnostic started pestering ectoBiologistst at 2:56pm  
GG: John!!!!  
GG: Finally! We’ve been trying to get in contact with you for a while now!  
EB: oh hey jade!  
EB: um, who are we?  
GG: Me and the trolls.  
GG: Karkat said that he was talking to one who was at your house?  
EB: oh, you mean the aliens!  
EB: um, yeah i guess, but i don’t really know if i believe them.  
EB: are you saying there’s some with you too?  
GG: Yeah!  
GG: They showed up last night, Bec brought me to them.  
EB: but don’t you live like, alone on an island?  
EB: how’d they get there?  
GG: I don’t really know :(  
GG: Dave says it’s because they’re aliens.  
EB: wait who’s dave?  
EB: is that an alien too? That’s not really an alien sounding name.  
GG: Oh no, he’s a human.  
GG: he has some trolls with him too.  
GG: According to them, we all knew each other in another universe.  
EB: wait, do you actually believe they’re aliens?  
EB: because i saw one flying but that might have just been like, a trick.  
GG: I’m not all that sure yet.  
GG: Dave seemed pretty convinced, but I’m still trying to be skeptical about the whole thing.  
EB: yeah, skeptical seems like a pretty good thing to be.  
EB:…  
EB: uhh  
EB: i might be slightly less skeptical now.

John wasn’t too sure what he was staring at, but it was definitely something worth rethinking his whole position on this over. There were the same red and blue fizzes that he’d thought he’d seen around Tavros earlier, when they had first came into his house, but they were a lot clearer now, and were obviously coming from Sollux. He supposed that made sense considering the weird glasses he was wearing, but John really hadn’t made that connection before.

The important part wasn’t that there were just red and blue lightning bolts coming from him however, not at all, but the fact that the lightning bolts were holding up an old coding book in the middle of the room for the boy to read. 

“Uhhh…” he managed to articulate nicely. He couldn’t help it though, that was just really, really weird. What even were those supposed to be? Sollux seemed to notice he was staring, turning and glaring at him slightly. Now that John was looking, he could see that it wasn’t just his glasses that were red and blue, but his actual eyes as well and not just like, cool mix-matched pupils or anything, but the entire eyes were those colors. 

“Is something bothering you?” he asked, sounding rather irritated. John quickly shook his head, suddenly realizing what he meant by Vriska should have asked him for help carrying Tavros up the stairs. 

“Uh no, what are those?” John asked, pointing to the levitating book to demonstrate what he was talking about.

“Psionic, what’s it look like?” he answered, and John just shrugged, deciding it would be better to just return to his computer. 

GG: Oh you are?  
GG: Why’s that?  
GG: John, are you there?  
EB: yeah, sorry about that.  
EB: one of the aliens has telekinesis powers.  
GG: What?  
GG: Are you being serious right now?  
EB: yes!  
EB: he was levitating a book in the middle of my room jade.  
EB: i think they might actually be telling the truth.  
GG: Are you sure it wasn’t some kind of trick?  
EB: it really didn’t look like one.  
GG: bluh, that’s two of you now.  
EB: jade, how many aliens even are there?  
EB: how many are at your house?  
GG: Apparently there are twelve of them, and we each have three.  
EB: wait, that doesn’t add up.  
EB: is there another person with aliens?  
GG: Oh yeah, her name is Rose.  
GG: I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to her yet, but Dave knows her.  
EB: Oh, okay then I guess.  
GG: Karkat wants to talk to you.  
GG: I had two computers last night but they managed to break one of the keyboards :(  
GG: I’m gonna try to fix it while you guys talk.  
EB: alright.  
EB: he’s another alien right?  
GG: Yeah, he’s pretty grouchy though, so be warned.  
EB: alright, talk to you later.  
GG: See ya John :)  
gardenGnostic ceased pestering ectoBiologist

John had barely managed to close out of the chat window when another one popped up on his screen. It was the same angry looking grey writing from before, so he assumed that this KK person Sollux had mentioned was actually Karkat. He was calling Vriska and Tavros by weird names too, so that made sense. 

carcinoGenetisit started pestering ectoBiologist at 3:23pm  
CG: MIND BLISTERING FUCK JOHN  
CG: IT TOOK FUCKING LONG ENOUGH FOR YOU TO SHOW YOUR INFURIATING BUCKTOOTHED FACE.  
EB: um, nice to meet you too?  
CG: NO, WE ARE NOT GOING THROUGH THIS SHIT  
CG: WE NEED TO GET DOWN TO BUSINESS.  
EB: to defeat the huns?  
CG: WHAT? NO.  
CG: FUCK NO, TO WHATEVER GOD AWFUL IDEA IT WAS YOU JUST SPOUTED.  
CG: WE NEED TO BE SERIOUS HERE; A LOT IS RIDING ON US FIGURING THIS SHIT OUT AND SOON.  
EB: why us?  
EB: it sounds like that dave guy jade was talking to has a better handle on the situation.  
EB: i just found out about you guys after all.  
CG: FIRST OF ALL, FUCK STRIDER.  
CG: THAT INSUFFERABLE PRICK COULD NOT HELP CREATE A REASONABLE PLAN THAT DID NOT INVOLVE SUICIDE OR RAPPING IF HIS LIFE DEPENDED ON IT.  
EB: how would a suicide plan help his life?  
CG: EXACTLY.  
CG: BUT I DIGRESS, THE REASON WHY WE NEED TO BE THE ONES TO FIGURE THIS OUT IS BECAUSE WE ARE THE LEADERS JOHN.  
CG: FIGURING SHIT OUT IS WHAT WE DO.  
EB: why am i the leader?  
CG: BECAUSE YOU ARE, WE DO NOT HAVE TIME TO GET INTO THE NUANCES OF LEADERSHIP JOHN.  
CG: YOU WERE THE FIRST ONE TO ENTER THE GAME, YOU WERE THE ECTOBIOLOGIST, AND YOU’RE THE FRIENDLEADER. SIMPLE AS THAT.  
EB: my chumhandle has something to do with this?  
CG: JOHN, WHAT DID I JUST SAY WE DON’T HAVE?  
EB: time?  
CG: EXACTLY, NOW I’M GOING TO NEED YOUR HELP.  
CG: I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THIS PLANET.  
CG: HOW CAN WE ALL GET TOGETHER?  
CG: JADE KEEPS SAYING THE FACT THAT SHE’S ON AN ISLAND WILL BE A PROBLEM.  
EB: well yeah, it will be.  
EB: we’d need to get you on a plane, or a boat or something.  
CG: AND WHY IS THAT A PROBLEM?  
EB: uh, they cost money?  
EB: also, people might not let you on when you look like that.  
EB: because like, your horns could be used as weapons.  
EB: and you can’t really take them off, can you?  
CG: NO YOU IDIOT, WE CAN NOT TAKE THEM OFF WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF QUESTION EVEN IS THAT?  
EB: i was just making sure, no need to freak out dude.  
CG: I AM NOT FREAKING OUT. I AM VERY CALMLY CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT I’M STRANDED ON YOUR FUCKING FALSE PARADISE PLANET.  
EB: paradise planet?  
CG: IT’S NOT IMPORTANT.  
CG: WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS HOW WE’RE GOING TO ALL GET TOGETHER IF WE CAN NOT GET OFF OF THIS FUCKING ISLAND.  
EB: um, i’m not sure, really.  
EB: but there are twelve of you guys right, and i don’t have any idea where the other people who have the rest of them live either.  
CG: DAVE AND ROSE.  
EB: oh right them.  
CG: GOD FUCKING SHIT HIVE I CAN NOT BELIEVE YOU GUYS DON’T EVEN REMEMBER EACH OTHER, THAT IS SOME FUCKED UP SIDE EFFECTS RIGHT THERE.  
EB: vriska seemed upset that i couldn’t remember a bunch of stuff too.  
CG: OH FUCK RIGHT YOU HAVE VRISKA WITH YOU DON’T YOU, AND TAVROS TOO SHIT.  
CG: LISTEN, DO NOT LEAVE THOSE TWO OUT OF YOUR SIGHTS FOR VERY LONG, ALRIGHT?  
EB: um, why?  
CG: JUST TRUST ME ON THIS, YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.  
EB: alright then, i guess.  
EB: oh, i’m getting a message from someone else, hold on a moment.  
CG: NO, JADE WANTS THE GOD DAMN HUSKTOP BACK NOW.  
CG: CONGRATULATIONS, THIS PRETTY MUCH ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING.  
EB: sorry about that then, i’m sure we’ll be able to figure something out eventually.  
CG: JUST GO TALK TO YOUR HUMAN FRIEND.  
EB: alright then, later karkat!  
CG: RIGHT.  
CG: TALK TO YOU LATER.  
ectoBiologist ceased pestering carcinoGenetisist.

John sighed as he closed out of the screen. Looking over, the person pestering him was someone he’d never heard of before, but that wasn’t all that surprising at this point. Taking a deep breath, he tried to prepare himself for this next conversation. Chances were it would stretch his limits even farther than they have been so far today.  
If anything, all of this was going to keep him busy for quite a while.

\---  
Dave Strider was not one to care about a lot of things. Oh, it wasn’t that he was a heartless bastard, no not at all. It just wasn’t all that cool to get all jumbled up emotionally over the chicken shit. Not that it was uncool to express what you liked, oh hells to the no. You go at that shit, paint your face like a shitty anime and you fucking own it. He had absolutely no problem letting people know of his completely unironic love of irony. But that wasn’t the emotional Jungle Jim he was talking about.

No, Dave Strider didn’t care about the people in it just to get him down. Or well, maybe not to get him down but those who wanted to not raise him up like the fucking god that he is. Or just didn’t want anything to do with him one way or another. The neutrals. Which… was a lot of people. Most people. 

But whatever, he totally had it made. Fucking cushy as shit life up in this joint. Mixing sick as all hell beats and creating art of the most ironic quality people have been brought to tears at the shear mastery of it all. Living in an awesome shitty apartment and eating all kinds of take out. Having that nosy pseudo-therapist attempt to pry apart his every sentence to find enough dick symbolism Freud himself would weep.

Yeah, that last part was only kind of awesome. Don’t get him wrong, Rose was totally chill, when she wasn’t all up in his business about ‘how does that make you feel’ and ‘are you sure the reason you were eating hotdogs at lunch wasn’t because of your massive craving for the dong?’ 

Totally wouldn’t trade any of it for the world though. And it wasn’t just because she seemed like the only person willing to put up with his shit for any extended amount of time sans bro. 

The blond pulled himself away from his computer to scout the kitchen for anything edible. It they had a lot of miscellaneous junk lying about everywhere, but if you searched hard enough you were usually able to find something. Dave didn’t really feel like searching all that hard though, and quickly returned to his room with a half empty bag of cheerios. 

The Pesterchum app was blinking; alerting him to an incoming message, but when he pulled the window up it was not the regular purple of Rose’s text that he had been expecting. Instead, teal, and oh god was that leet speak? It took him a moment before he was able to figure out what the hell the message even said, because he wasn’t a fucking dweeb who could read leetspeak. 

GC: D4V3, 1S TH1S YOU?  
GC: H3H3H3H3H3  
TG: oh hell no what the flaming fuck is this  
TG: who gave you my handle  
TG: was it rose i bet it was rose  
GC: NO D4V3, 1T W4SN’T ROS3, WHY WOULD SH3 N33D TO DO TH4T.  
TG: no it was clearly rose you even know who im talking about  
GC: D4V3, NOW IS NOT TH3 TIM3 FOR S1LLY JOK3S.  
GC: W3 4R3 K1ND OF 1N A CR1S1S H3R3.  
TG: oh shit a crisis  
TG: why didnt you just say so  
TG: oh man do i gotta send you shit loads of money so you can reclaim the algerian throne  
TG: or is it cybering you want from me  
TG: come on man i need to know if its the kind of emergency that requires money or sex  
GC: DON’T B3 DUMB, YOU’V3 4LR34DY S3NT M3 4LL OF TH3 MON3Y I N33D3D, R3M3MB3R?  
GC: TH1S 1S A D1FF3R3NT K1ND OF 3M3R3NCY.  
GC: WH3R3 4R3 YOU?  
TG: sorry no can do man  
TG: stranger danger  
GC: WH4T 4R3 YOU T4LK1NG 4BOUT?  
GC: SH33SH D4V3, YOU COULD 4T L34ST PR3T3ND TO B3 H4PPY TO T4LK TO M3 4G41N.  
GC: 1 KNOW YOU W3R3 UPS3T WH3N W3 S41D BY3 >:]  
TG: oh shit you can see the future  
TG: actually you must be a pretty shitty fortune teller cause aint no way im getting bent up about saying bye to you  
TG: so yeah  
TG: bye  
GC: NO!  
GC: DON’T GO YOU J3RK!  
GC: W3 R34LLY N33D YOU’R3 H3LP!  
TG: you still haven’t told me the nature of this crisis  
TG: tick tock dude time is ironically awesome comics I could be makin  
GC: W3LL, W3 S33M TO B3 STR4ND3D 1N 4 ST4NG3 PL4C3.  
GC: 1T SORT OF LOOKS L1K3 TH3 C1TY YOU GR3W UP 1N, SO W3 W3R3 HOP1NG FOR SOM3 H3LP H3R3.  
TG: okay first of all you keep saying we like who is this we were talking about here  
TG: also how the hell would you know where I grew up im getting a pretty big stalkery vibe from you  
TG: or i would be if this wasn’t all some sort of elaborate ruse done by rose  
TG: like seriously are you rose  
TG: rose are you in texas  
TG: is this what this is about  
GC: NO D4V3 FOR TH3 L4ST T1M3 TH1S 1S NOT ROS3  
GC: 1T’S T3R3Z1. G4MZ33 AND 4R4D14 4R3 W1TH M3.  
GC: 4LSO TH3R3 4R3 HUM4NS 3V3RYWH3R3 1T’S R34LLY W31RD.  
TG: oh shit yeah i suddenly know exactly who youre talking about  
TG: except yeah no  
TG: blocking you now  
GC: GOD D4MN 1T D4V3 W41T!  
turntechgodhead blocked gallowsCalibrator at 12:50pm

Dave ran a hand through his hair, his mouth tucked down just the slightest in annoyance. This really didn’t seem like something Rose would do, just wasn’t her style to pull dumb pranks like this. She was more fond of the psychotically torturing you method. Maybe some assholes from school? But what was even the point? Pretending to be weird leetspeaking people for no reason? It wasn’t even trolling him like what the hell it seemed pretty fucking stupid as far as pranks go.

Seeing Rose’s handle lighted up, he quickly started messaging her. Even if it wasn’t her playing some weird mind games, it was someone to tell this to.

turntechgodhead started pestering tentacleTherapist at 12:52pm  
TG: yo rose did you sick some weird as fuck trolls on me  
TG: seriously you can’t just be giving out the chum handle to everyone who asks  
TG: and I know it must be hard cause people be yearning for a opportunity to yap at this every chance they can get  
TG: but a dude needs some privacy  
TT: I have no idea what you are talking about.  
TG: some weird troll started messaging me about being in some sort of crisis  
TG: apparently i am their only hope  
TG: its me  
TT: Of course you are.  
TT: Well, you better go off to the rescue then, wouldn’t want those poor souls to fall victim to the as horrible as it is vague crisis.  
TG: yeah i know  
TG: but no  
TG: seriously though do you know anything about this  
TT: Can’t say I do.  
TT: What exactly were they talking about?  
TG: apparently theyre lost in a place near me and arent used to seeing other people  
TG: dont doubt that last part  
TT: that is rather odd.  
TG: oh god damn it someone else is messaging me now  
TG: hold on

Dave flipped over to the other message box that had appeared before him. It was a different chum handle, and this one wasn’t talking in as god awful leet speak thank all that is holy.

apocalypseArisen started pestering turntechGodhead at 1:02pm  
AA: dave!  
AA: I’m not entirely sure why you do not wish to speak with Terezi, but I think you should know we aren’t joking around.  
AA: if you’re nearby, we could really use your help.  
AA: all of these humans seem so interesting and exciting! But Terezi is worried that they might not take too kindly to us.  
AA: although no one seems to be minding us so far.  
TG: god damn it another one  
TG: look i dont know what this is all about but not interested  
AA: GOD D4MN 1T D4V3 WH4T 1S WRONG WITH YOU  
AA: TH3S3 HUM4NS 4R3 GO1NG TO ST4RT G3TTING SUSP1C1OUS OF THE 4L13NS WOND3R1NG 4ROUND 1N TH3 M1DDL3 OF THE STR33T.  
AA: SOM3TH1NG W3NT WRONG W1TH TH3 SCR4TCH, WE TH1NK W3 3ND3D UP ON 34RTH.  
AA: SO H3LP US YOU 1NSUFF3R4BL3 DOUCH3!  
TG: no wait bring the other one back  
TG: at least i could understand what they were saying without having to translate shitty leet  
AA: NO W4Y  
AA: 1F YOU DON’T COM3 H3LP US, W3’LL F1ND YOU.  
AA: YOU KNOW 1’LL JUST SM3LL YOU OUT >:]  
TG: well that’s not creepy and totally made me what to help you all the more  
TG: not  
AA: URG  
AA: WH4T 1S WRONG W1TH YOU!?  
TG: just too cool for school  
AA: YOU 4R3 NOT B31NG 4 V3RY COOL K1D R1GHT NOW  
AA: I got the computer back from Terezi.  
AA: there really does seem to be something wrong with you though  
TG: you know it  
TG: so wrong im right  
TG: all kinds of ill up in here  
AA: do you really not remember us?  
TG: pretty sure i never spoke to you people in my life  
AA: oh dear, this must be because of the scratch, of course!  
AA: don’t worry Dave, we’ll find you soon.  
AA: Terezi says she remembers what your building looked like from the viewport.  
TG: yeah im gonna go ahead and block you now  
AA: See you soon!  
TurntechGodhead blocked ApocalypesArisen at 1:12pm

TG: okay im back  
TG: it was the trolls again  
TG: different handle this time but still the same ones  
TT: Oh, and how did it go this time?  
TT: Were you able to save them?  
TG: you know theyd be all hells of safe  
TG: if i actually gave a shit  
TG: you sure this isnt your doing this has you written all over it  
TG they even seemed to kind of know who you were  
TT: They did?  
TG: yeah  
TG: or at least when they said you didnt send then they didnt say they had no idea who you were  
TG: which is what people usually say when they have no idea who youre talking about  
TT: Maybe they did that to confuse you further?  
TT: In any case, I have no hand in this.  
TT: Although it is rather amusing watching you get flustered over a few harmless trolls.  
TG: whoa now who ever said anything about getting flustered  
TG: dude that is not a thing striders do  
TG: aint even in our vocabulary man  
TT: Oh of course, what was I even thinking, suggesting such a thing?  
TG: you werent thats what

In the other room, Dave could hear the front door closing just barely, Bro’s way of letting him know he was going to be gone for the night probably. Which was totally cool because Dave was fifteen and had been capable of taking care of himself for a few years now. 

He ended up chilling out and shooting the shit with Rose for longer than he had originally planned, if there was even a plan in the first place. Finally the other teen had to leave, saying something about time zones and not wanting to ruin Dave’s beauty sleep. He retorted with the fact that there was no need for beauty sleep he was just born like this. 

It was dark once he heard a furious banging on the door to the apartment. So that definitely wasn’t Bro, if he in some way managed to get himself locked out he would just fuck with Dave by coming in through his window using the fire escape. He didn’t even need to lock himself out for that; he would just do it on occasions. 

The knocking continued for a few moments, finally convincing Dave to rise from his desk. Vaguely, he thought back to those weird trolls messing with him earlier, they had said they would be here soon. He was pretty sure they were just fucking with him though, they probably didn’t even know where he actually lived, even if they were from school or something, he never brought anyone back to his place.

He was in the hallway when he heard a sickening crunch of splintered wood and a much clearer grating yell.

“God damn it Gamzee you weren’t supposed to rip the door off! We aren’t even sure this is exactly his block!” a high pitched female voice said, sounded completely exasperated. Dave quickly flashed into the living room, finding himself frozen as he took in the scene.

“Sorry there sister, didn’t think the thing would all up and tear apart like that,” a tall, grey covered boy said. He was holding the doorknob, half the door still attached. Looking over at the other two entering his house, they were both covered in grey as well and were those horns? And fucking claws? And okay one of them was definitely wearing some sort of shitty fairy wings this was not what he signed up for.

“What the fuck?” he managed to say bluntly. It instantly drew the attention of the three… whoever the fucks that were in his apartment. The one with the wings grew a wide smile and quickly walked, no wait oh hell no god damn floated over to him.

“Oh Dave thank goodness! Sorry it took us so long to find you, a lot of these places look the same,” she said happily.

“What the fuck?!” he repeated, not seeming to be able to get anything else out. Before the fairy was able to say anything else she was pushed out of the way by the other girl, who was frowning and pretty much looked like she was at her wits end. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the tall guy trying to put the half-a-door back into the frame. Oh god how was he going to explain this one to Bro?

“So Aradia says the scratch must have messed up and made you not remember anything, is that true Mr. Not So Cool Anymore Kid?” the girl now in front of him asked. Focusing his attention back on here, she seemed all sharp angles and points. Holy shit her teeth were actually sharp? Looked like she had all canines what kind of costumes were these what the fuck was going on?

“I have no fucking idea who you people are or what you’re talking about,” he managed to say; not quite understanding what it was she had just asked him. What had they said her name was? Tereezy? Shit sounded as fake as the rest of their get ups (he was ignoring the fact that one of them was still hovering a few inches off the ground, that was not something that he was going to deal with.)

“Urg, I cannot deal with this right now! It was hell getting here and he doesn’t even remember! Can you try to get Egbert or Harley on Pesterchum maybe one of them will remember something?” the girl complained, turning back towards him at the end to ask that.

“Who?” was all he could say because seriously, why were try expecting him to know more strange people? “Actually never even mind that I don’t want to know. You all need to get the hell out of here you got the wrong guy.” 

“No we don’t, the scratch just seems to have mixed a few things up is all. I’m sure we can get this all sorted out soon enough,” the fairy told him. Shit he was going to have to learn their names. Wait no, no he was fucking not because they were going to get out of his life right this moment and he would never think about this awful surrealist experience again.

“What do you mean who?” Terezi practically shouted at him. She was running clawed hands through her hair, stopping to rub circles near the base of the weird fake horns sticking out of her head. Dave refused to accept the idea that they might be real. They were sticking out of holes in a wig or something. 

“What the hell makes you think I would know more random ass people when I have no idea who you guys are?” he asked. Dave nearly flinched when he heard the sound of something clattering to the floor. Turning, he saw the other guy standing above a turned over rack of swords, the crappy array of weapons spilling over the floor. The door was still in his hand, it seemed like he was trying to find a place to put it since the frame wasn’t working anymore when he knocked the stuff over. Fuck, he kept forgetting about that guy because he wasn’t really saying much.

“God damn it Gamzee! Stop messing with his shit, he’s already pissed at us,” Terezi yelled. The tall dude with the huge horns, who he guessed name was Gamzee, offered her a lazy smile as he finished setting the half door against the wall. Fuck there was something really unsettling about this guy. 

“Not a problem sister, just tryin to find a place for this mother fuckin shit here,” he said, making a small gesture over to the broken door. Terezi rolled her eyes before huffing and turning back towards Dave.

“Whatever, how do you not even know John? I mean he’s a human the scratch shouldn’t have affected that I don’t think,” she said.

“Oh yeah, let me just get out my book of every human being on the planet. Let’s see here, John, John, John, oh yep right here under what the fuck are you talking about get the fuck out of my house already!” he said, trying to keep a hold on the situation. He had to get these freaks out of here. He had no idea how long Bro was going to be gone for and yeah the dude could be out all night but he might decide to mess with Dave and come back in ten minutes to be an asshole. 

“I don’t think we’re explaining this very well,” Aradia chimed in, and Dave had to roll his eyes behind his shades.

“No fucking way, you think that?” he snapped. The fairy had a hand under her chin and seemed to be trying to think of a way to convey their madness to him, and his brain decided it couldn’t take it anymore. “How the fuck are you floating?” he asked. She blinked at him for a moment before smiling brightly.

“Oh, I’m godtier, it’s something from the game, so I don’t believe you would remember it right now,” she explained, or he guessed that was supposed to be an explanation. Instead it just made him even more confused.

“Just what the fuck do you people want with me?” he asked, running a hand through his hair and failing miserably at keeping his cool. Whatever this was it was not happening to him.

“We just need some help figuring out how we got here and how to get back, and if any of the others are here,” Terezi said. Dave felt his stomach sink at that last part.

“Others? Oh fuck me please no,” he moaned. Aradia didn’t seem to pick up on his distress though, or if she did she didn’t fucking give a crap because she kept up that cheerful smile as she started to explain.

“Oh yes, there are twelve of us. Hopefully the rest managed to get sent back to Alternia, but something tells me they’re here and probably with the other humans,” she said, that last part nearly causing Dave to twitch in irritation.

“What the fuck do you mean other humans? I’m not gonna lie here I’m not really getting the set up you have going on. Are you guys going for an alien thing? Usually ya gotta be more systematic for that, one of ya’ll can’t just have wings and shit. You other two seem to have a solid thing going if not for the weird markings on Jim-Jam over there,” he started to ramble. Terezi huffed once again, crossing her arms and walking over to fall onto the couch in a pout. 

“We are aliens Dave, you’re going to just have to accept this, the sooner you do, the better. And we mean the other kid players, you know, John and Jade and Rose?” she said. Okay, that last named definitely perked his interest.

“So Rose did set you up to this, I fucking knew it!” he said, nearly about to run into his room to demand she wake up and get on Pesterchum so he could chew her out. The only thing stopping him was that he did not trust these three alone in his home if his life depended on it. He didn’t trust most people in here alone actually, but that was mostly for their own safety. With them he was more concerned about them trashing the place in a manner of seconds. 

“Oh my god no Dave! She did not set us up to this! I haven’t even talked to Lalonde in quite a while!” She said, sounding rather exasperated once again. “In fact, chances are she probably doesn’t remember us either if this is a cause of the scratch affecting all of you,” the grey girl kicked her heels up onto the makeshift coffee table as she said this.

“Well whatever, you all need to get out of here. I feel like I’m repeating myself, but there’s absolutely no way I haven’t already said that a million fucking times. If that had happened you probably would have left, or at least that’s what normal people would have done, not crazy people dressed up as aliens who break down my god damn door,” he said, moving over to push her feet off of the table. Like hell were they gonna get all comfy. 

“Chill out cool kid, we just need a place to stay until we get all of this figured out,” she said, starting to sound a lot less annoyed and more in control, which was not sitting well with Dave at all. As was the idea that they thought they could stay here.

“Oh hell to the no, this is not happening. You are not staying here, I don’t even fucking know you people. Bro could come home. You are leaving now, hear me?” he said, trying to sound as in command as possible, and not on the verge of a nervous breakdown. 

“The sister here is right motherfucker, we ain’t gonna make no problems for you, so just relax my blasphemous brother,” Gamzee said, and Dave wasn’t able to stop himself from flashing the hell away from him. When the fuck did that dude get behind him? He lived with Bro for fucks sake he should be able to notice something like that, especially with someone so huge. 

“We should really try to get in contact with the other humans, Dave do you have a computer I could borrow?” Aradia asked.

“No, no and fuck no. Get the hell out,” he was not backing down on this, and like hell was he letting them use any of his stuff.

“It should be in his room, down the hall there,” Terezi called, her feet back up on the table again. Dave could see Gamzee starting to wander towards the kitchen as Aradia thanked the other girl and started over to his room. He didn’t know who to follow and stop first.

Aradia seemed less likely to attack him, so (totally not out of fear of this dude) he decided to run after her instead.

“I said no, get the hell away from there,” he said, seeing her already sitting down in his desk chair, wings splayed out behind her as to not get bent up by the chair back.

“I’m just going to try to message Jade, she might have a chance of remembering due to living with a first guardian,” she said, signing out of his Pesterchum and into her own.

“Who the fuck is Jade?” was all he had the power to ask. Seriously, this was starting to wear on his psyche. This would wear on anyone’s psyche. Rose was going to be able to have a field day with his after this because fuck if he wasn’t permanently damaged in all sorts of vaguely diagnosable ways. 

“One of your players, you were friends with her before the scratch,” she said, clicking on a Pesterchum name he didn’t recognize but who he assumed was this Jade person.

“And what the fuck is a scratch?” he didn’t even know why he was asking at this point. He didn’t believe any of this. But it was like a slow motion train wreck overtop of an active volcano with botched fireworks all going off at once, he just couldn’t leave it be. 

“A system in the game you can activate to reset everything. We tried to make it so that we would all get through intact with our memories and universes as we left them, but it seems we weren’t quite able to,” she said, typing in a friendly :Hello Jade : into the app.

“This is not happening to me,” he muttered, starting to walk in circles. Fuck, he should probably go check on those other two. Oh god what if bro comes home? Well actually, at least the dude might be able to get these assholes to fucking leave already. (there was a sick part of him that was saying they were telling the truth, the one girl was fucking flying half the time and those horns and teeth and claws looked real and they knew more about him than they had any right to for people he’d never met, but that part was sick and he was ignoring it for the part that was sane and wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of this).

Hesitantly, he started back into the living room to make sure the other two weren’t wrecking anything too much. Aradia for the most part actually seemed pretty harmless, but those two looked like they could do some damage. Hell, the one dude already broke the fucking door.

Terezi was still sitting on the couch, the TV remote in here hand now, and she was licking it. What the…? Okay you know what fuck it he didn’t want to know. Deciding that it probably wouldn’t short circuit the thing he walked over to the kitchen to make sure the big dude hadn’t turned over the fridge or something. 

Well, the fridge was still in its place, thankfully, as was the rest of the major furniture pieces. Gamzee was standing in front of the fridge; the door open and looking inside with what Dave guessed was curiosity. It was kind of hard to tell with this dude, he had even more face paint on than the rest of them, making these weird splotches that looked like clown markings on his face. Was he supposed to be an alien clown? Maybe that was why he was so unsettling. 

“Dude, no, stop going through my junk,” he said, but once again the guy just offered him this weird, half out of it smile.

“I said to just motherfucking chill my brother, I ain’t doing no harm to your refrigificator,” he said, and Dave just… didn’t know how he was even supposed to respond to that. How was he supposed to respond to any of this? He needed help. Fuck he needed to talk to Rose.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he quickly started sending her a barrage of texts, hoping she hadn’t put her phone on silent or something so she could wake the fuck up and help him.

rose  
rose please i need your help  
their crisis is now my crisis im fucking losing it here  
god damn it rose wake up we have reached level five critical what-the-fuck over here  
level god damn five rose  
one of them can fly  
and i think one is a clown  
rose they wont leave  
shes licking the remote rose  
rose  
rose  
rose  
rose  
Dave Strider I swear to god, I am trying to sleep.  
What in the world are you talking about?  
the trolls rose  
the weird ones from earlier  
they broke down my fucking door and now they wont leave  
theyre fucking grey and have horns and claws and shit  
one of them has wings and actually flies around  
shes using my computer  
I think you need to get some sleep  
no i dont i swear im telling the honest to fuck truth  
here ill send you a picture

Dave quickly turned his phone to where Terezi was flipping through channels in his living room. She seemed to have calmed down considerably from the noticeable tension that had been running through her a few moments before. He snapped a picture of the girl before she seemed to notice, or if she did notice, she didn’t care, and immediately sent it over to rose.

see im telling you weird as fuck people who wont leave my house  
please tell me you have something to do with this  
because if so haha very funny now make them leave also pay for my door  
I swear I have no idea what’s going on with you.  
You’ve never met them before? Underneath the costumes, that is?  
fuck no  
and even if i did they shouldnt have any idea where i live i don’t bring anyone here  
like if they were from school or something  
maybe bro is behind this  
doesn’t seem like him though  
not enough puppets involved  
The lack of puppets really does undermine the possibility, doesn’t it.  
Have they been going on about the same crisis nonsense as earlier?  
yeah  
although apparently that crisis was needing a place to crash  
and something about a scratch and a game and these people named john and jade  
any idea who they could be talking about  
Not a clue.  
oh also they apparently know you too  
Is that so?  
yeah they said there’s more of them and that some might be with you  
rose if anyone with grey skin comes for you run  
run and don’t look back  
its not worth it trust me on this its not  
Duly noted.  
So, what are you going to do about them? Calling the cops might persuade them to leave.  
yeah i thought about that but heres the thing  
one of them can fly  
and theres something about that clown guy  
i feel like he could kill a dude  
and just  
go about his day  
like nothing even happened  
You keep saying that one can fly.  
What?  
exactly what it sounds like  
one of them just likes to chill out in the fucking air not hanging onto anything  
so long story short  
i dont think calling the police will work too well  
Well, do you have any other ideas on how to get them to leave? Whatever you’re doing now doesn’t seem to be working out too well.  
no like i said i need help

Terezi was calling him over, and he took a deep breath, trying to brace himself for whatever it was he needed to brace for. This was not going to go well, but he needed to remain in control. Cool, he just needed to stay cool.

He was not staying cool in the slightest.

\---  
Rose stared at her phone for a few moments, waiting to see if Dave would come back with another… interesting update on his current situation. Really, she was not quite sure what to make of everything he was telling her. It honestly did not sound like he was lying about anything, but the majority of his claims were rather extraordinary. It was always possible that he himself wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, which was most likely what happening.

After waiting for another ten minutes she tentatively started to put the phone back down, but the second her head hit the pillow the ding of an incoming message went off. Groaning and rubbing one eye with the back of her hand, she raised the phone above her as she read whatever asinine message Dave had decided to send this time.

yo the aliens think were related  
also i guess theyre spending the night  
Well, it seems like you’re handling the problem in a mature and well thought out manner.  
And what in the world would make them think that?  
oh you know it all sorts of adult like decision making going on over here  
and idk theyre just kind of weird and tend to think freaky things like that  
apparently were also gods  
which for me is like  
hello of course thanks for noticing  
not sure where they got that idea for you though  
Right, well, I wouldn’t trust anything they say quite yet.  
Now, if you have your whole dilemma on what to do settled and have decided to stay up watching movies and eating junk food with these intruders, might I ask you to let me sleep already?  
oh right times zones and shit  
damn you just need to come to texas so we dont have to deal with this bull  
Right, I’ll let my mother know in the morning.  
Now goodnight Dave.  
Alright, night sis  
Do not do that.  
yeah that felt weird as fuck  
even for ironic purposes just no man

Rose set the phone down on her bedside table, lowering the volume down to vibration in case Dave decided to send her any more ‘ironic goodnight messages.’ Unsurprisingly, the phone did end up buzzing a few more times before ultimately settling down, Dave probably having finished the end of this current rant or figuring out that she had indeed intended to actually go to sleep this time. 

Truthfully, she was incredibly curious about everything that he was speaking about, especially if the majority of it was true, and especially if certain claims such as one of these people being capable of flight were true as well. She managed to stop it from keeping her up for much longer however, reasoning with herself that if she managed to wake up early she could get in contact with Dave to hear about how his night had gone. 

She did indeed end up waking rather early, and figured Dave would not be awake for another few hours at least. That is, if he managed to sleep at all considering the circumstances. Even still she would wait a little while before trying to contact him. Chances were he would start messaging her the moment he either woke up or believed she would be able to answer him. 

Walking into her kitchen, she saw a note pinned to a cabinet from her mother. It was written in sloppy spelling and even sloppier handwriting saying something along the lines that she would be out for the day. 

Rose barely gave it a passing glance before opening the cabinet in order to get out a tea packet. While heating up the water and placing a few slices of bread into the toaster, she heard what sounded like someone knocking on the door.

Rose sighed, leaving her breakfast as she headed towards the living room. Her mother must have managed to forget something and lock herself out of the house. Again. At least she was being gracious enough to simply knock this time, instead of attempting to break back into her own home like a mad woman. 

As she approached the door, however, she began hearing voices arguing outside that were most certainly not her mother’s normal delirious mutterings as she tried to work the lock with a broken hair clip. The chances of it being the typical door to door salesmen or religious affiliation were slim, as most of them would not bother coming thirty minutes into the woods of New York for a single house. 

Without any sort of hesitation she decided to open the door, although she couldn’t help the confusion that overcame her when she saw who was on the other side.

Three teens, looking just slightly younger than her were standing there, seeming to be arguing with each other without any regard for her. In fact, it seemed that they hadn’t even realized she had opened the door. Although that was most certainly not the strangest thing about them, if that was the case she would just assume they were some lost hiker fed up with each other after wandering in circles for hours. 

They were all in very elaborate get ups, with strangely shaped orange horns sticking out of their heads. Two of them, a boy and a girl, had grey skin, with what looked like fins plastered to the sides of their faces, and the last one was another girl and was much paler. She seemed to be glowing in the early morning sunrise. Strike that, she was definitely giving off a faint glow. 

The boy with the fins had his hands up in the air, and appeared to be in the middle of a rant. There were twigs in his hair and the long purple cape he was wearing seemed to have several tears along its bottom.

“Fuckin hell Kan I am sick and tired of walkin around in circles for hours I don’t wanna have to wait for your girlfriend too!” he yelled, starting to pick a few of the small sticks out of his hair once he was done. The girl he was arguing with, apparently the glowing one, crossed her arms in a huff, glaring daggers at the boy, which actually seemed to get him to back down considerably before she even spoke.

“You are lucky we didn’t leave you alone in there, I must admit the idea had crossed my mind more than once,” she told him coldly. “And it’s not like that, I don’t know why you must always make accusations like this it is really quite annoying,” she added on. The other girl quickly nodded in agreement, seeming just as put off by the boy.

“Yeah, Kanaya is totally right Eridan! We had every right to leave you so stop complaining so much!” she said. The boy, Eridan, seemed to be about to respond, but Rose decided it was probably a good idea to make herself known, clearing her throat to catch their attention. Not only was this situation extremely strange and something she wanted to figure out as soon as possible, but considering Dave’s current situation with three strange, grey children with orange horns suddenly showing up at his house, that managed to make it even more urgent that she figure out just what the fuck was going on.

The three quickly turned towards her, all staring in surprise for a moment. Rose carefully raised a single eyebrow in question, waiting for at least one of them to begin explaining.

“Ah, Rose…” the one with glowing skin said, seeming unsure about what to say. “I, um, how have you been?” she asked. Rose continued to stay silent, simply choosing to make an even more incredulous face. The other girl, Rose doesn’t remembering hearing her name yet, quickly came up to her, sticking out her hand and smiling brightly

“Hi Rose! I’m Feferi! We didn’t reel-y talk much but it’s very nice to meet you!” the girl, Feferi introduced herself enthusiastically. She then frowned slightly as she jabbed a thumb towards the boy, “and this is Eridan, if you weren’t able to tell from all the whining,” she said. He looked like he was about to jump into the conversation to defend himself, but Rose decided enough was enough and cut him off.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to need an explanation, how do you know of me and what are you doing here?” she asked. Once again, they seemed to be in a small state of confusion. Kanaya opened her mouth to say something, before closing it once again, thinking for a moment and starting over.

“Rose I’m sorry is this a part of your human sarcasm again? I thought I had gotten it down but perhaps it is more confusing in person,” Kanaya asked. 

Alright, so it was already glaringly obvious that these people had something to do with the ones that had infiltrated Dave’s apartment last night, so either this was an extremely elaborate ruse Dave was pulling on her, or something was actually happening, and considering Dave’s rather lacking ability to straight up lie things were leaning heavily towards the second option. 

“I’m not being sarcastic, I believe there might be some… miscommunication going around,” Rose explained. Deciding that these people did not look anywhere near as capable of murder as Dave had implied and that there was no way they were going to solve all of this fast enough for her to leave them on the doorstep, she decided to invite them inside of her home. “Why don’t you come inside and we can try to get this all settled,” she offered. 

Eridan quickly walked past the other two girls, shouldering Rose out of the way as he made his way into the house.

“About time you showed a little hospitality human,” he said. Before he was able to get any farther, Feferi quickly stomped on the end of his ridiculous cape, nearly causing him to fall on his face. 

“Don’t be a douche Eridan!” she commanded, only letting her foot up once Rose stepped out of the way to let them into her house. This time, the boy stayed where he was until the women were in front of him.

Rose led them back into the kitchen, going over to the toaster to find the bread cold again, quickly throwing it out before putting two more slices in. Kanaya stood by a counter while Feferi and Eridan both took seats on a few of the stools. The two grey teens were watching them with interest, although each were showing it to varying degrees, Feferi seemed content to look back and forth between the two without shame, while Eridan made a show of messing with the tears in his cape to look as though he was doing something else.

“So, Rose…” Kanaya started, trailing off slightly. Rose continued to fix up her tea as she started talking.

“Why don’t you three explain to me your situation and I’ll try to see how it adds up to what I’ve already heard,” she said, taking a sip of tea.

“Well, we believe we were accidently sent to your world after the scratch, and I recognized your forest from the viewport but it took us quite a while to find it,” Kanaya explained. Okay, so there was that scratch thing Dave had mentioned as well. This definitely seemed much too well planned for something he could pull off. She was still hesitant to believe them however, because well, it was ridiculous. 

“So tell me, are there more of you out there?” Rose asked, watching as the other girl frowned. Kanaya went to answer but was cut off by Eridan.

“Well of bloody course there are, what’s gotten into your think pan?” he said, seeming to give up with the tattered remains of his cape for the moment. 

“I’m sorry for whatever you think I should know, but I can absolutely no memory of anything you people are talking about, or any of you for that matter,” Rose explained carefully. To her surprise Kanaya’s face seemed to drop in disappointment more than anything, while the other two just seemed surprised. 

“Are you sure about that? I must admit I didn’t fully understand your plan for the scratch myself but you seemed rather certain that it would allow all of us to remain intact, and well also return to our own universes but I suppose we’ve already proven that part was a bit faulty,” Kanaya said. Rose nodded, quickly taking her phone off of the counter to start texting Dave as she spoke.

“I’ve heard from my friend that he had gotten three visitors extremely similar to you yesterday, which was truthfully the only reason I’ve bothered giving you the benefit of the doubt, but yes, I honestly have no idea who any of you are, and am frankly rather confused about the costumes,” she told them. 

“Oh, I see…”

“What do ya mean costumes? Girl we’re royalty this is how we’re supposed to look!” Eridan butted in indignantly. The other aquatically themed girl next to him elbowed him in the side.

“I think she just means the fact that we’re trolls Eridan, she’s obvifishsly never seen one before in this universe,” Feferi explained to him. The other troll still just rolled his eyes, scooting away from her slightly and trying not to rub his side too noticeably. 

“Well actually, Dave had sent me a picture of one of you yesterday, but I have no proof that that person wasn’t in a costume as well,” Rose said. Kanaya perked up at this, seeming to start to come out of the disappointment of Rose not remembering her.

“Oh, some of us are at Dave’s as well? I suppose that means the rest would be with John and Jade, if we are lucky in that respect,” she said. 

“I don’t know a John or Jade, but Dave had said the others had mentioned people with those names as well.”

“God freaking damn you don’t even know all the other players? There were only four of ya how hard can that even be?” Eridan said. Rose decided to just ignore him, something about him seemed far too much trouble than it was worth, and with the way the other two girls were treating him she was pretty sure she was right in that respect.

“What does he mean by players?” Rose instead asked Kanaya. She seemed very sensible, and for some reason she felt that she was probably the one she could trust the most. 

“He means the one who played the game in your session, but I guess you wouldn’t remember any of that now would you,” Kanaya said. Rose shook her head. 

Rose quickly read the last couple of messages Dave had sent her the night before, deciding the barely coherent ramblings weren’t worth her time and started typing a new message.

Dave, it would appear I have some visitors. Message me when you get this.

Placing the phone back on the counter, she turned back to her guests. Her mother was going to be out for most of the day, and in the event that they had to stay longer (which seemed like an inevitability at this point) there was a ton of extra rooms in the house that her mother wouldn’t look into, most likely at least. And even then she might be too drunk to do anything and just think Rose had some odd dress up friends over. 

“We should probably get in touch with them, even if you haven’t before, do you have a computer I could borrow?” Kanaya asked, and Rose nodded, starting to lead her towards her room where her laptop was. The other two also followed, which Rose was slightly grateful for because she wasn’t too sure if she trusted them alone in her house yet. Signing into her computer, she handed it over to the girl, not entirely sure what good this would do but resigning to it none the less.

The phone she had grabbed before leaving the kitchen started buzzing away it her hand, and she turned away from the three teens starting to huddle around the laptop to answer the incoming messages.

yo shit are you serious  
now is this like actual code red visitors  
or is your moms book club over again  
rose if youre messing with me i swear  
you have no idea what my night was like  
I’m afraid I’m not joking about this.  
Three strange, orange horned teenagers who claim to know me and talk about a scratch and a game.  
They’re trying to get in contact with either a John or a Jade at this very moment  
oh man leave jade alone for now shes kinda pissed  
Oh? So you’ve already contacted her?  
yeah aradia got on that shit pretty quick  
but like i said shes got a lot of stuff going down so maybe not bother her for a while  
also shes probably still asleep  
cause she lives in like the middle of the pacific ocean  
Well, it seems like you talked to her quite a bit, perhaps you made a friend?  
were so not going to start with this  
but yeah jade seems pretty cool  
Alright, I’ll let them know not to bother her too extensively. What about John?  
oh he blocked terezi almost instantly  
we decided to hold off on him for a bit  
Okay then, I’ll see if he’ll talk to Kanaya any.  
So, what is your take on all of this?  
what you mean the aliens  
i think its fucking wack as shit but they seem to be telling the truth  
which is fucking shit because according to them they made our universe  
with a video game  
a video game rose  
we are a sims game left running in the background  
You’ve certainly changed your tune.  
You were denying any chance that they could be aliens last night  
well a lot can happen in eight hours  
also one of them is blind  
dont think i mentioned that last night  
which ones do you have by the way  
apparently some of them got pretty crazy powers  
Well, their names are Kanaya, Eridan and Feferi.  
terezi said watch out for eridan hes gone on a killing spree before  
but kanaya should be able to handle it so no worries  
A killing spree?  
Should I be worried?  
nah just keep an eye on him  
at least that’s what tz says  
you should probably be at least a little worried  
TZ?  
Oh my gosh you are actually becoming friends with them aren’t you?  
For all of that panic last night you seem to have handled it rather well.  
fu  
first of all gamzee is still creepy as fuck  
hes a fucking juggalo rose  
also still mildly worried about him killing me in my sleep  
just this vibe im sensing  
but i guess tz and aradia are pretty chill  
I have just noticed that every single person you’ve ever had a conceivable friendship with has been a female  
is this really the best time to be psychoanalyzing my allure to the ladies  
rose i think we have bigger problems here  
also do aliens even count  
i mean yeah they definitely seem to be girls and stuff  
but still aliens  
also i don’t want to go into details  
because i was sure as fuck not going to let them go into details  
but it sounds like their reproduction is hells of complicated  
and might not always require a boy and a girl  
which is something

Rose decided to take the time of Dave’s current tangent to let the trolls around her computer know what he had told her about this Jade girl. Looking up at them, they were still arguing amongst themselves, although even that mostly consisted of the two girls telling Eridan to stop trying to talk.

“I’m speaking to Dave, he said it would be best to leave Jade alone for now. She’s probably asleep at the moment and was a bit irritated when they tried to contact her last night,” Rose told them. Feferi looked up at her and nodded.

“Yeah, she shore can be irritable when she doesn’t get her sleep. We’ll start trying John then,” she said. Kanaya nodded and started typing away at the computer again. When Rose managed to look over her shoulder, she could see that the girl was capitalizing the first letter of every word. 

yo rose you listening to me  
rose come on man you started this conversation  
you ditched me for your new alien friends didnt you  
cold rose ice cold  
I was simply relaying your message about Jade, calm down.  
oh  
okay then cool  
let me know if john actually talks to you guys  
apparently he should have some trolls with pretty sweet powers  
speaking of which you didnt tell me what yours are like  
I don’t know?  
One of them can glow and the other two seem to be fish themed.  
huh  
thats weird  
okay nvm tz just told me thats troll for vampire and some sort of weird fish troll thing  
so the last one is exactly as you said congratulations  
A vampire? Really now?  
Dave I’m not entirely sure if you should trust everything they tell you.  
There is the slightest chance that they might be living up to that name you keep calling them.  
oh yeah man dont worry im being hells of skeptical  
shit bros gonna be home soon  
gotta go stuff em in the attic brb  
Are you being serious right now?  
Oh dear…

Rose sighed, running a hand down her face as she tried to imagine the scene most likely taking place at this very moment. She may have never met Dave’s brother personally, but she had a feeling he was going to be well aware of the visitors within a few seconds of walking into that apartment. Possibly even before that, if Dave had not managed to fix the door last night, and the chances of that actually happening were extremely low.

She supposed she needed to stay focused on her own problems for now though. Those problems being three strange looking children sitting in her room, arguing amongst themselves.  
This was going to take some getting used to. 

\---  
Jade smiled as she sat up from her computer, having just said goodbye to her great pal John. There really weren’t that many people she knew in the world, and she had happened upon talking to him online simply by chance, but he was definitely one of her favorite people to talk to. Although there wasn’t really all that much competition, since the only other people she talked to on a regular basis were her grandpa and a dog. She would like to stay and chat with him for longer, but she had important business to attend to. 

That important business involved feeding her dog and going out with her grandpa to mess with the froggies in the lagoon. Quickly dishing up a steak for the large dog, she started down the long stairway to the main floor of her equally large home, where she could guess the dog would be outside somewhere.

“Hi grandpa! Going out to feed Bec,” Jade said happily as she passed her grandfather in the foyer. The older man nodded at her, bent over the coffee table as he picked up the remains of the tea party he was having with the distinguished houseguests, although he didn’t like to call them tea parties anymore like he did when Jade was little, but instead ‘grand strategy meetings.’

“Righty-o my girl, can’t let that old boy go hungry can we?” he said, balancing several cups and plates in one hand as he picked up more with the other. 

“We’re going to go back to see the frogs today right grandpa? You wanted to see if the serum we gave them last week had any effects,” Jade asked, shouldering one of her rifles, just in case she needed it when looking for Bec. She had never encountered anything remotely dangerous on the island in all the time she had lived there, which was her whole life, but Grandpa had taught her that one can never be too certain of their surroundings. The older man nodded his head vigorously, starting towards the kitchen area with the plates.

“That’s quite right, we were planning that for today weren’t we? Capital then, we’ll head out to look at those pesky frogs once I’m all cleaned up here and you get the old dog a good meal,” he told her, and Jade nodded, quickly saluting her grandpa before starting out the front door. 

Jade looked around the yard as she started walking down towards the forest, not expecting to see the animal right away. Bec was such a trickster, but he would show up soon enough. That old dog always knew how to find her. 

She decided to head towards the lagoon, figuring she could meet grandpa there and hopefully Bec would show up on the way. About half way there a green sparking lit up behind her, and Jade turned around, finding a large white dog sitting a few feet away, seeming to stare in her general direction, tail wagging. 

“Hey Bec boy, I got you a snack!” she announced happily, getting the steak out and waving it around for the animal to notice. Before she could blink, the steak was gone, and Bec was back where he sat, food in his mouth, although it quickly disappeared as he devoured it. Once he was finished, he walked up to her and Jade patted him gently on the head.

“Good boy, wanna help me and grandpa with frogs?” Jade asked, and the animal didn’t give too much of a response, just slightly blowing some air out of its nose before starting towards the lagoon. It didn’t walk too far before disappearing from her sight in a flash of green lightning, and Jade assumed he either went back to the house to walk to the water with Grandpa or straight to the lagoon.

The rest of the day went as normal as they usually do. Bec had been at the water when she arrived and grandpa showed up not too much longer afterwards. Once they were done examining the effects on the frogs (all signs pointed to the serum workings, with several of the frogs nearly three times their original size) the three headed back to the house. Bec quickly fell asleep in front of the fireplace as Jade and her grandpa ate dinner before Jade returned to her room to talk to John again a bit before going to sleep.

They both talked about their days, Jade explaining to him all of the super cool science they were currently doing. John insisted that he didn’t have that exciting of a life when compared to most people, but Jade still thought it was super interesting, since she really wasn’t able to do a lot of that ‘normal stuff’ like going to school with other kids since she lived alone with her grandpa. 

After talking for a while though she had to say goodbye to the boy for the night, sleep tugging at her eyes and pulling her in. Pushing her laptop onto the bedside table, she quickly fell asleep, not bothering to change into any kind of pajamas and just cuddling around her stuffed animals and pillows.

It was maybe three in the morning when a flash of green and a cold wet nose pressing into her arm shook Jade awake.

“Mmmmhhhhh, Bec boy whadya want?” she muttered into her pillow. That old dog never really bothered her about anything before, especially when she was asleep, but she couldn’t bring herself to think it was that big of an issue. Surely if something was wrong grandpa would be on it in a jiffy. Bec pressed at her again, but instead of opening her eyes and seeing what he wanted, Jade pulled the blankets around her over her head, rolling away from the dog for extra measure.

Suddenly there was a flash of green light surrounding her, and when it was gone in the next second Jade found herself no longer in her bed or even her room. Squinting, all she saw was dark shadows and trees around her. Instinctively she went to reach for her glasses before realizing that they would still be on her bedside table on top of her laptop where she last left them.

“Bec, you left my glasses! What do you even want out here? It’s not play time, boy,” Jade muttered, turning to look at the bright streak of white in the darkness around her. The animal didn’t respond, instead turning around and starting off in what Jade could tell was a completely random direction.

“You better be leading me back home boy, you’re being a bad doggie,” Jade scolded, starting to follow the animal. After a few feet though, she started to hear something that sounded like voices; yelling voices, off in the distance. Perking up from her still sleepy daze, she started in the direction of those sounds; it seeming to be the same direction Bec was trying to lead her. Had people managed to find their island? Were they friendly? Should they go get grandpa before meeting them? A whole bunch of questions started running through her mind, but she wasn’t able to decide on an answer for any of them before just going and seeing who it was herself.

Soon, the voices started coming into range and Jade was able to make out what they were saying, or well, yelling mostly.

“God fucking damn it if I see another leaf rope slivering across this hell path something is going to pay! Probably fucking me, because I’ll just trip over it like a sack of excrement and break all of the calcium rods in my miserable bodies,” one of the voices was practically screeching. 

“I’m going to have to strongly advise you from using such lude language. Again,” another person spoke, sounding rather tense.

“Yeah Karkitty, it’s just some plants, Pounce and I used to hunt in places like this fur food all the time!” this one reassured, and Jade was pretty sure it was a girl. Jade took a few more steps towards the voices, certain she was nearly upon them now. She could hear three people walking, and when she took another step forward one of them seemed to have suddenly stopped.

“Shhh,” the girl hissed, and almost immediately any sounds of walking and angry huffing stopped. Jade quickly decided to make herself known, not wanting to upset whoever was out there. If they were bad, she had Bec to get her back to the house. Oh, Grandpa would be so upset if he found out she ended up leaving without her gun, but Bec really had gotten the drop on her this time.

“Um, hello, is someone out there?” Jade called, taking a few more steps forward and moving some of the underbrush out of her way. When she saw the people on the other side, her still sleepy mind wasn’t quite able to process what was going on. Maybe she wasn’t seeing them right since she didn’t have her glasses? Either way, the one closest to her looked downright relieved to see her.

“Oh thank fuck someone sane, or well, mostly sane in this world. Jade what the fuck is going on, do you know how to get the hell out of here?” he asked. Jade carefully looked the boy in front of her over, glancing over to his two companions as well, and squinting to try to see in the blurred darkness.

He seemed short, although the girl was slightly shorter, and from what she could tell all of their hair was black. That’s not what stood out though, instead that was the strange shapes jutting out of their heads. They were almost unnoticeable on the short boy in the dark, just two small orange-ish humps barely sticking out of his hair. The girl’s (what were they, horns?) were similar, although larger and not quite as rounded, and the other, much taller boy had one that went off into an almost arrow shape. There was also something off with their skin, but Jade couldn’t really tell in the darkness what it was.

“How do you know my name?” she asked after a moment, starting to actually pay attention to what he had said to her. The boy stared at her for a few seconds, seemingly baffled. Really though, she felt like she was the one who should be looking like that right now, they’re the ones who showed up without explanation in the middle of the night on her island, after all.

“What the fresh fuck do you mean how do I know your name? It’s me! Okay, okay, yeah I guess you never did see what I look like, I apologize. It’s Karkat, and these two idiots are Equius and Nepeta, but frankly I have no idea if you really talked to them all that much, hopefully not,” he said, although that did not clear up her confusion in the slightest, but at least she had some names now.

“Um, well it’s very nice to meet you Karkat but we’ve never spoken before,” Jade told him. Karkat seemed to sputter for a moment, completely thrown off by that answer. Before he was able to form another coherent sentence though the taller boy, Equius, butted in.

“Are you absolutely sure this is the correct human?” he asked. Okay, that sure was a weird way to refer to someone.

“Of fucking course I’m sure you dumb fuck, Jade Harley, idiot gadgeteer extraordinaire, am I right?” Karkat said, directing the last part towards her.

“Yeah, and hey! I’m not an idiot, I just don’t know you! Don’t be rude,” she protested. 

“Right Equius that really does seem like Jade, but I am purrplexed. You don’t remember us any?” the girl asked. Jade shook her head, trying to stop herself from getting irritated. This Nepeta seemed a lot nicer than the angry screaming boy, after all. 

“No, I’m sorry, I would have remembered if I met you people, I’m sure,” She told her. “Maybe we can ask my grandpa about it?” she suggested, but Karkat immediately started shaking his head.

“Oh hell no, I’m not about to talk to your weird adult man lusus. Wait, what do you mean talk to him? How the fuck would we do that?” He asked, and Jade just shrugged, not entirely sure what he meant by ‘lusus’ or why talking to him would be any sort of problem.

“I mean, he’s sleeping in his room, we could just go and wake him up,” Jade said. Karkat had begun to rub circles into his temples, already appearing to be at his wits ends.

“What fucking timeline/universe did we land in? Are we in a dream bubble from before you ever talked to us? That has to be it, hasn’t it? We all fucking died because the scratch fucked up and now we’re stuck in island dream bubble hell for all eternity,” he muttered to himself, confusing the life out of Jade. Not a single word he had said had made sense to her but before she could ask for any kind of clarification though Equius started speaking.

“I do not believe this is a dream bubble. Being dead feels different, it is not a strong difference, but it is there,” he said. Okay, that was another really weird thing to say. God these people were so weird. Of all the people to end up on her island in the middle of the night, it had to be these guys. Why couldn’t John have given her a super surprise visit, that would have been so much more awesome.

“How did you guys even get on my island?” She decided to ask, hoping that maybe they had a boat or something and they would be able to send them on their way in the morning. It wasn’t that Jade wasn’t excited to meet new people, but she was tired and they weren’t making any sense and Karkat kept screaming and hurting her head.

“We have no fucking clue, we just showed up here after the scratch,” Karkat told her, which really didn’t explain anything.

“What scratch?” The other boy sighed at the question, although Jade didn’t see why he had any right to act like this was a big problem for him, she was the one with the trespassers. 

“The big fucking record in your session that resets the game that we tried to use to break the system in some sort of suicidal mission, you seriously remember none of this?” he asked her and Jade quickly shook her head.

“Not a single word you just said made any sense!” she insisted. 

“It made perfect sense if you would remember what happened! Jesus fuck it was your guy’s plan in the first place, I wasn’t even sure if we would fucking manage to live through the thing,” he yelled back. Jade groaned as she pulled on the ends of her hair a bit.

“No it really didn’t! I never met you people before there’s nothing to remember!” she tried to reason with this guy, even if she was probably yelling more than someone who was trying to reason calmly should be. She started rubbing at her eyes, the lack of glasses and all this squinting to see in the dark was hurting her head even more.

“I forgot how stubborn and idiotic you can be when you don’t know what’s going on sometimes,” he muttered. It seemed like he was able to start saying something else but Jade was not about to just let that comment go without protesting.

“I’m not being idiotic! And besides that’s not something you could remember because we’ve never met before!” she yelled. 

“Yes we have now will you just listen to me for one bulge fucking minute!” he demanded, not saying anything for a moment, as if expecting her to argue with him.

“Well?” Jade prompted, hoping he could give her some reason why Bec pulling her out here was not a completely horrible idea on the animal’s part. Glancing down at her side, the dog was still there, thankfully, so if she really needed to get out of this situation she could. Thankfully, these people didn’t seem dangerous, just frustrating.

“Oh, okay. Well, listen, I don’t know if this scratch thing worked, but it seems we are back in your universe, so I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that it did,” Jade made to protest that he still wasn’t making any sense, but Karkat held up a hand to halt her for a moment, “Wait I’m not done explaining. It looks like when we reset the universe, it wiped your memory clean, which is an incredibly frustration situation and I have no idea how to fucking make you believe me because last time it took forever for you to hear anything I had to say and I’m not in the mood to go through that again,” he seemed to have finished this time.

“So let me get this straight, you are claiming that we knew each other in another universe prior to this one, that we had managed to reset somehow?” Jade asked, completely incredulous. Karkat nodded, seemingly absolutely serious, and Jade was simply at a loss for words. 

“Yes, I, fuck, maybe we can talk to John about this? That idiot might manage to remember,” Karkat suggested. Jade’s eyes went wide at the mention of her friend’s name.

“You people know John? How?” she demanded.

“The same way we know you, through the fucking game,” Karkat told her, sounding irritated that he had to keep explaining this, although Jade really didn’t think he had any right to be upset.

“Purrhaps it would be best to get in contact with the other humans, and try to figure out where the rest of our furends ended up,” Nepeta jumped in, appearing like she was trying to stop another fight between the two from breaking out. Karkat quickly nodded in agreement.

“Fuck right, we do need to figure out if everyone else was sent to this hell hole of a paradise planet too. Jade we really need to use your computer,” Karkat said, turning back towards Jade at the end. The girl huffed, crossing her arms and puffing her cheeks out slightly before sighing and reluctantly nodding.

“Alright, but only because you people seem to know John, we gotta be quiet though, I don’t want to wake grandpa up,” she told them before turning towards Bec. “Hey boy, take us all home?” she asked, hoping that he would understand her request and take the three other children with them, and not just her.

Silently, she almost hoped that Bec wouldn’t bring them along, but when she opened her eyes the three were still there, and she had to hold back a sigh. 

She had a feeling it was going to be a long night.


	3. Chapter 2- Connecting It Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a bit longer than I had intended. This was due to the fact that I am not a time player and therefor had a rather difficult time trying to make sure everything lined up timeline wise from the pieces I wrote during NaNoWriMo. I think I have it down now though, so hopefully the next chapter will not take as long.

Vriska Serket was confused. She was also extremely irritated due to the aforementioned confusion. There was probably a slight panic picking away at her as well, but she chose to ignore that in favor of the anger building inside of her. Turning towards the easiest target, she had to look down to yell at him from where he was sitting in the grass.  


“Just what in the world is going on here?” she asked, and the boy below her shrugged helplessly.  


“I don’t know. I uh, I died before you did, remember? Maybe we’re in another dream bubble?” Tavros offered. Vriska grimaced at his answer, because yes, of course she remembered.  


“This really doesn’t look like any dream bubble I’ve been to Tavros. Tell me, is this one of your memories?” she asked.  


“Well, no,” he told her, and Vriska just rolled her eyes at his answer, having been everything she’d expected. Giving up on him for now, she decided to turn to the other troll currently with them. Why they were stuck with this guy as well, she didn’t have the slightest clue.  


“Hey Sollux, quit standing around like an imbecile and maybe try to help up understand what the hell is going on here. You were still alive when we died, so what gives?” she questioned. Sollux was currently standing next to a tree, rummaging through his pockets and muttering curses to himself under his breath.  


“Can either of you access your sylladex?” was his only response, and Vriska frowned as she tried to take something, anything, out of the strangely abstract space.  


“No, so are we still dead or not? You’re really not being very helpful here,” she told him.  


“Fucking hell, something went wrong. No, we’re not dead, but I need to see if we can contact any of the others,” he answered finally, starting off in a seemingly random direction. Vriska groaned as she started after him, barely registering Tavros calling out as they walked away.  


“What went wrong? There are fucking humans everywhere if you haven’t noticed, what in the world were you all trying to do?” she demanded, stepping in front of the boy’s path.  


“Yes, I have noticed, that’s what went wrong, what do you think? We were trying to all get back to our own universes using the scratch, but it looks like we ended up on the human’s planet. Now I need to find a computer and try to get in touch with some of the others so that I know I don’t have to spend the rest of my miserable life with the two of you,” he explained.  


“Oh, well shit, tell us something like that. Does that mean the humans are here? This sort of looks like John’s neighborhood, only with other actual humans around, we should try to find them too,” She insisted. By now Tavros was calling even louder, a clear irritation in his voice. Vriska groaned and started back over to the other troll, Sollux actually stopping to wait for them this time around. Before Tavros was able to say two words to her, she hefted him up over her shoulder, making her way back over to the third member of their party.  


“So um, what’s going on, exactly?” Tavros asked from over her shoulder, but Vriska ignored him to see if Sollux was actually going to answer any of her previous questions.  


“We’re stuck in the human’s world. And yes I suppose if we can’t get in contact with any of the others, the humans will have to do, but I swear to fuck I hope it doesn’t come down to that,” the other troll tells them both.  


“Alright, that sounds like a plan! Now where in the world are we supposed to find a husktop?” Vriska said, starting to look around, hoping for the off chance that there might be some sort of big sign showing them where they needed to go. Irritated by the lack of any clear path, she tried to reach for her sylladex again, but there was no sign of the structure at all, or any of her shit she had shoved in it. She’d seen the humans using them in their world, so she had no idea what its deal was.  


“How the hell am I supposed to know? You both paid more attention to the human world than I did, shouldn’t you have at least double the amount of knowledge as me?” Sollux asked, and Vriska groaned, dropping Tavros to the floor as she glared at the other boy.  


“First of all, shut it with the shitty puns. Second of all, why would I know where a computer is, I didn’t pay attention to that, John had one in his room but I don’t really remember how to get there from here! I don’t even really know where here is,” she told him, looking around at their surroundings just in case maybe there was something that would jog her memory from the dream bubble trip she’d taken with that doomed John. It looked kind of like those parks he’d told her about, with grass and trees and paths for people to walk down, because apparently that was amusing in some way?  


“Jade just seemed to have them around her home, but I didn’t really watch any other places,” Tavros added, having pulled himself into a more comfortable position from where she’d dropped him.  


“Well then, we’re all fucking clueless on this issue, this is just great,” Sollux grumbled. Vriska glared at him, once again turning around herself to see if she could figure out something they could do. A grin instantly broke out over her face when she caught sight of someone sitting a ways away from them underneath a tree, trying away at the husktop on their lap.  


“Foooooooound one! You two losers stay here while I handle this!” She announced, starting over towards the human. He looked probably a few sweeps older than them, but not particularly strong or remarkable in any way. She really couldn’t see how any normal human could be a match to just a troll in general, let alone her.  


“Oh, Vriska that really doesn’t seem like a good, um, idea, on no…” she could hear Tavros muttering behind her, as well as some lisped cursing from Sollux, but she quickly ignored those two as she reached the human. Standing in front of him, it took the human a few moments before noticing she was there and looking up. She could see his eyebrows rise slightly, but otherwise he didn’t seem all that concerned. Boy was he wrong about that.  


She quickly reminded herself that they were not here to hurt anybody or draw any unnecessary attention; they just needed to use the computer.  


“Pretty cool costume kid, you want something?” he asked, and Vriska frowned as she crossed her arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Sollux and Tavros were walking up to them as well, or well, it seemed that Sollux was using his psionic to move Tavros, his body held up just high enough that his feet were dangling on the ground, almost making it look like he was walking himself.  


“Yeah, sorry about this, but we need to use the computer,” she told him bluntly, watching as the man frowned and seemed to think the command over for a bit.  


“What for?” he asked back, just now noticing the other two having reached them.  


“Whoa VS, you’ve really worked on your people skills, haven’t you?” Sollux butted in, and Vriska didn’t bother looking at him as she instead answered the human.  


“We’re lost and need to get in contact with some friends,” she said, trying to see if the nice peaceful approach would work. The man certainly seemed hesitant, but actually handed the computer to her after a moment.  


She knew that Trollian was not going to be on this device, she didn’t even know if they could get it in this universe, and so she quickly set up a Pesterchum instead, sending messages to everyone she could. She cursed to herself as none of the other trolls answered.  


“I’m going to try John,” she told Sollux, completely ignoring the human sitting off to the side of them rather awkwardly at this point. It seemed that Sollux had stopped keeping Tavros hovering slightly and he was now seated next to the human, making small talk with him. Hell, as long as he wasn’t bothering her, maybe it would actually be useful and keep the human from pestering them as they worked.  


To her absolute delight John actually answered her, but she found herself in very similar situation as she’d been in the dreambubbles, with the boy insisting he had no idea who she was. After a few minutes of this, Vriska could see that the human talking to Tavros was starting to get a bit impatient with them, and Sollux quickly grabbed the husktop off of her lap.  


“Give me that,” he said, quickly typing away, although whatever he was doing it wasn’t on Pesterchum. After a few seconds he seemed to have an address, quickly closing out of her conversation with John as well.  


“Hey, how do we get to this place?” he asked the person, who gave them directions to John’s street. The three quickly left, although Vriska could see that the person was staring at Tavros in confusion, probably due to the slight sparks of psionics coming off of him, as well as the way his feet didn’t actually move as he sort of just glided forward. Whatever, it wasn’t her problem to explain anything.  


It actually didn’t take them too long to get to the correct house, having not been all that far away in the first place thankfully. Vriska went straight up to the door, the two other trolls following after her, before banging loudly. After a few moments, and thinking about the conversation she’d last had with him, she decided to fly up to his window instead, knocking on it with much less force than before.  


When he caught sight of her he fell out of his chair, looking completely shocked and confused. Vriska couldn’t help but roll her eyes. What had gotten into him, even when she’d met that doomed John in the dreambubbles he’d been much more relaxed about all of this. She could see him rubbing at his eyes like he didn’t quite believe what was going on.  


Well, they would manage to bring his memories back, or at least figure out what had gone wrong this time, just like they had before.  


It really was nice to see him again too.  


\--- 

After having talked to Karkat John quickly switched over to whoever was messaging him in the other screen. It ended up being Rose, and the two had a rather interesting talk all things considered, although it ended up just cementing the fact that it would be nearly impossible for all of them to get together. The two had to cut their conversation short however, due to something that sounded suspiciously like something crashing down the stairs on John’s end.  


Looking away from his computer screen, he saw that Sollux was the only one still in his room, lying on his back on John’s bed, the coding book floating a few inches above his head.  


“This book fucking sucks,” he told John, not appearing to have any kind of concern for whatever that loud banging was. “Also I think Vriska pushed Tavros down the stairs again,” he added on, almost as an afterthought.  


“Um, should we go help?” John asked, remembering what Karkat had told him about not leaving those two alone for long. Sollux shrugged, flinging the book into the corner with his psionic.  


“I am not about to get into their bullshit, you can do whatever you want, but if you’re going to go then move so I can use to husktop already,” he told John, and the human decided to quickly get out of the chair, figuring someone should go and try to make sure if that guy was okay.  


When he got to the top of the stairs he saw the two missing trolls at the bottom, Vriska pulling Tavros up by one arm and walking/dragging him over to the couch. John quickly stumbled down the stairs, managing to reach them once Tavros was sitting back down, holding his head and looking rather irritated.  


“Uh, what happened?” John asked, looking the two over.  


“Nothing, go back to talking to Karkat,” Vriska attempted to wave him away, but John really didn’t think that was actually the case.  


“I stopped talking to him a while ago, Jade needed to use the computer,” he explained. “Is he okay?” John asked, turning towards Tavros. From what John could tell there weren’t any major looking injuries on him, but it was kind of hard to tell since he was an alien. Do aliens even bruise?  


“I’m uh, I’m fine, although I wish I still had my four wheeled device,” Tavros told him.  


“A what? Do you mean a wheel chair?” he asked, suddenly realizing that this guy was probably actually paralyzed. Wow, that could make things even more complicated when it came to hiding them. Although he guessed Sollux could just levitate him around if they really needed to.  


“Um, yeah I guess that’s something you could call it,” Tavros answered.  


“You’re fine, I was going to carry you down the stairs,” Vriska butted in.  


“Why were you guys coming back down here, anyway?” John asked, not about to try to get into whatever had happened that had made Vriska not carry him down. He had a feeling it was the girl’s fault in the end, but he wasn’t going to start an argument over this, since Tavros appeared to be alright all things considered.  


“We were getting hungry and wanted to see if there was anything to eat in this joint. You know John, it’s very rude not to offer your guests anything to eat or drink,” Vriska told him.  


“You were hungry,” John heard Tavros mutter under his breath slightly, but he decided it would be best to ignore that for now. If Vriska heard she was ignoring it was well, which was probably a good thing for the troll boy actually.  


“Oh, I’m sorry about that then, I can get you something to eat,” John said, starting over to the kitchen. He wondered what kind of food aliens could even eat. Vriska went to follow him, while Tavros stayed on the couch. They would have to find out something he could use as a wheel chair though. Maybe his rolling-desk chair would work? At the very least they could push him around in it. Or they could just rely on Sollux he guessed.  


Whatever they figured out though they would have to do it soon, or at least figure out a way to hide them all soon. His dad would be home in about two hours and it would probably be pretty bad if he found out John was harboring aliens. Or just if he found out that John had a bunch of strange people over without any permission and that they didn’t have anywhere to go or anything like that.  


He would talk about it to them after he found something they could eat. Looking around his kitchen, he wasn’t all that sure what to offer them. Something his dad wouldn’t notice as missing right away. That cut out the cake sitting on the counter, since John barely ate them to begin with, so seeing a few slices taken out would definitely get the man’s attention. It would also probably convince him that John was in the mood for cake, most likely increasing the amount he made and it would just be this whole Betty Crocker filled mess.  


He ended up opting to make them sandwiches, although Vriska had no idea what mayonnaise was. Even though Tavros had hinted that he hadn’t been hungry, John made both him and Sollux food as well, since he honestly wasn’t sure when the next time he’d be able to sneak them anything to eat would be.  


He decided to himself that he would make sure to get them all one more thing before his dad came home, since afterwards he would have to wait until the man fell asleep.  


John made sure to carefully watch Vriska as she carried Tavros back up to his room, holding the sandwich he’d made for Sollux as they all walked. The third Troll barely turned as the group entered John’s room.  


“No one dead yet huh? Good job EB,” he told John noncommittally. The human just chuckled slightly as he placed the sandwich and drink on the desk for him. It was just water, since he didn’t want to accidentally poison any of them or something like that.  


“We made you something to eat,” John said as he walked over to his bed, not entirely sure what they should do now. There should probably be some super intense planning and such going on, or the trolls should be telling him all about this past life he apparently had, but honestly his brain was starting to feel a little fried from everything that had happened today. He wasn’t sure he would be able to focus on any of those things if they went down those paths.  


“Does anyone want to watch a movie?” he ended up asking instead. It was kind of hard to say that he could see Sollux rolling his eyes with the way they were solid colors, but he was pretty sure that was what happened. Vriska seemed to perk up at the suggestion though.  


“I suppose it has been a long day, I don’t see the harm in it,” she said, and John couldn’t help the large smile that broke out on his face.  


“Sweet! I’ll go grab my dad’s laptop since I think Sollux still wants to use the computer,” he said, leaving the room and running downstairs to his father’s study. If they watched an hour and a half long movie then he should have enough time to put it back before his dad came home and noticed. John stopped by the kitchen to grab a few bags of snacks and some drinks, figuring this would kill two birds with one stone and he could make sure they ate once more before he had to hide them away.  


“Okay, so what movie do you guys want to watch? Vriska I know you said you’ve seen some earth human movies, what about you two?” John asked as he came back into the room. Tavros simply shrugged, pulling himself over when the human boy sat down on the bed so that there would be enough room for the three of them to see the computer screen. Sollux didn’t look like he was going to budge from his spot.  


“I literally could not give less of a shit,” he told them, and John decided that it really wouldn’t be worth it to ask his opinion on things like this in the future.  


“Maybe one of those movies with that one human actor? Oh, what was his name? Cage something?” Vriska suggested, and John’s face lit up once again, quickly sorting through the movies he had featuring one Nic Cage.  


“Oh sure! I have lots of movies with Nic Cage in them,” he told her, finally deciding on one and popping it into the computer. John made sure to let Sollux know he could come over and grab any snacks if he wanted as the movie started to play.  


John decided that this was going to be pretty fun. It was definitely confusing and unreal and crazy, but fun none the less. Terezi tried to keep herself calm when that irritatingly cool kid had blocked her. It just wasn’t making sense, she had thought he’d be happy to talk to her but apparently he didn’t care now that he was nice and cozy in his new universe.  


\---  


Terezi felt her lips twitch into a frown as her Pesterchum was blocked. The girl had already been at her wits end with how things had been going up until this point, and honestly the only thing that had been keeping her spirits up was how excited she’d been to surprise the human.  


“Arg! What in paradox space is wrong with him!” she groaned, pushing herself away from the computer. She and the others had managed to find this sort of free looking computational device station filled with books, so that they would be able to contact the kids, but it didn’t seem like it was even mattering at this point. Several people looked pointedly over at her irritably after the outburst, which was honestly the last thing she wanted, and when Aradia spoke next she did so in a much softer voice than Terezi had been using.

“Perhaps let me try to message him. Did you and Dave get into an argument before the scratch?” she asked, and the teal blood violently shook her head.

“No! He was just being his normal dumb cool kid self and pretending he wasn’t actually all torn up about having to say goodbye. It was a very sweet parting,” she told her, and it was all very true. There was no reason for him to be acting this way to her, but she moved out of the way so that Aradia could try messaging Dave instead. Even still, her shoulders were slumped in sadness as she tried to figure out if there maybe was something she’d done to piss Dave off before they’d said goodbye. Maybe he just actually didn’t want to hear from them again? 

When she moved she made sure to throw a glance over at Gamzee, making sure he hadn’t decided to wander off or start talking to anyone. It had been difficult enough corralling him into here and getting him to sit down quietly, hopefully they could get Dave to give them some decent directions or just come and get them, even if he was mad for some unfathomable reason.  


She really, really didn’t want to have to spend the rest of the day wandering through this very large city looking for his hive while having to keep both Gamzee and Aradia in line. Aradia wasn’t as bad, but she did get distracted rather easily.  


It turns out, that’s exactly what she ended up having to do. Dave had ended up blocking them again, but Aradia had insisted it was simply because this universe’s version of Dave didn’t actually remember them, which was complete bullshit. The point of what they were trying to do was to make it so that everyone remembered and everyone was back in their original universe. But it turned out that not everyone went to their original universe, and not everyone remembered.  


At least no one really seemed to bother them as they spent most of the day walking around in circles. It seemed like humans just didn’t care, which was really odd because if you saw a group of unidentified aliens walking around Alternia they would have been pretty much instantly culled. Humans sure were weird, but it worked in their favor so she did not truly mind.  


They had ended up nearly losing Gamzee twice, since he seemed to be unnaturally pulled towards dark alleyways and other shady places. Terezi also found herself having to pull Aradia down by her shirt more times than she could count (something told her that while the humans didn’t mind them wandering around, if one of them started flying that might draw a little bit of attention).  


It was dark out now, weird bugs were buzzing around them and biting at their skin, and finally, finally she was almost completely sure that they had found the correct hivestem.  


“Okay, I think we are here,” she announced, looking up the tall building. She knew that Dave had lived with his man-bro-lusus on the top floor, but she was not entirely sure if she remembered which door was his.  


“Alright, I’ll head up and-” Terezi didn’t let the other girl finish her sentence, pulling her back  
down from where she had started to float up.  


“No you don’t Medigo, I said no flying, like, a million times,” she said, not letting go of the girl as she started towards the main entrance of the building. She also made sure to glance back and check that Gamzee was following, which for the love of everything he was. There was a man in the front room who gave the three trolls a curious glance as they walked past, but the three didn’t stop to offer any sort of explanation. That would probably just make things even more complicated.  


There were so. Many. Stairs. God damn no wonder Dave had his weird preoccupation with the things if he had to go up and down this many every time he left his hive.  


Finally, finally, they made it to the correct floor.  


“I’m not entirely sure if I know which door leads to his hive, so let’s be careful here,” the teal blood advised, walking up to the door that she was almost certain was the correct one. Taking a deep breath, she calmly started to bang the ever loving shit out of the thing to get a little bit of the frustration from the day out.  


“Um, Terezi?” Aradia asked, reaching towards the troll hesitantly. Terezi took a deep breath, slowly lowering her own arm and ceasing her assault on the undeserving door.  


“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted, taking a few more calming breaths. While she was doing so, she did not notice Gamzee reaching towards the door, grabbing the knob and pushing forward until the sickening crack of the whole thing snapping in half alerted her to his actions.  


“Oh. My fucking. God,” Terezi breathed out, trying to keep herself some semblance of calm. That fraudulent calm quickly evaporating as she started yelling at him, although before she could get too far though, Dave made himself known.  


All things considered however, the rest of the night did not end up going too horribly, especially since it was confirmed that none of the kids seemed to remember anything about the game or them at all. The worst part of the ordeal had probably been being forced to stay shoved in Dave’s much too small for the three of them closet for a while after his brother had returned.  


They still had absolutely no plan and no idea what they were going to do and all of them were stranded ridiculously far away from each other, but surely they would end up thinking of something. At the very least, she supposed the scratch had worked in not completely destroying all of them like Karkat had been so certain would happen.  


They had no idea what had gone wrong, but maybe if they managed to figure that out, they could find a way to put it right again.  


\--- 

“Dave! Quit your twitching and come over here, I think I messed something up,” Terezi called out at him, knocking him out of the mindless pacing he hadn’t noticed he’d taken up while texting Rose. He quickly sent her a ‘be right back’ figuring he didn’t have to explain the exact reasoning’s for his leaving. She’d probably prefer he’d leave it to her imagination just how bad things could be screwing up for him.  


“Please tell me you didn’t break something,” he muttered. Terezi shook her head though, shoving the remote at him once he got close enough. He quickly remembered the sight he’d seen of her running her tongue all over the thing though and let it drop to the floor.  


“I can’t figure out your weird human entertainment box, put on something interesting for me,” she demanded. Dave carefully scooted the remote away from him with his foot.  


“Fuck no, you had your mouth all over that thing, figure it out yourself. Or better yet quit messing with my stuff and leave already,” Dave said, starting to pull his phone back out to continue talking to Rose. He didn’t know if he could handle this without talking to someone sane. Or at least saner than what he was dealing with over here.  


“I needed to get a better look at the buttons, how else did you expect me to do it?” she asked, not seeming to take the second part of his statement into consideration at all.  


“Oh I don’t know, maybe with your eyes. Holding it closer to your face like a normal fucking person,” he said, and Terezi just pouted, crossing her arms and leaning farther back into the couch cushions.  


“I’m blind, you’re being pretty rude right now cool kid,” she told him bluntly, catching Dave off guard.  


“No fucking way, I saw you walk around here without seeming bothered at all,” he countered, although still trying to get a better look at her eyes behind the bright red shades she wore now. He thought it might have been weird contacts to go with the rest of the costume (it was a fucking costume, okay brain, a god damn costume) but getting a better look it seemed like they really were completely red.  


“Yes way. Jeeze I can’t believe I have to explain all of this too you again,” she muttered. Terezi looked over at him, or maybe not if she was really blind but he highly doubted that cause it just didn’t seem like that at all. “What were you doing anyway? Talking to the ecto-sister?” she asked. God damn these fake-ass alien terms were going to drive him insane.  


“The what? He asked, getting yet another irritated look from the troll girl.  


“Rose, who else would I be talking about?” she answered, and Dave just shrugged, because how the fuck was he supposed to know that’s what she meant.  


“I don’t know, you guys seem to think I know a fucking lot of people. Also Rose isn’t my sister so yeah that might have thrown me off for a second, ya know. Maybe, just a little bit,” he said.  


“Uh, yes she is, that’s how you explained the whole thing. I don’t really get human relationships all that much,” she said, waving one of her hands in the air at the end, as if she didn’t really care about this.  


“No she’s not. We haven’t even met in real life,” he continued to argue, because fuck that noise. Yeah he kind of thought of Rose as a sister sometimes, but like hell was that an actual reality. That was just all kinds of wrong. Like that would imply that they have the same parents and okay maybe he wasn’t 100% on his lineage going any farther than Bro but he was pretty sure Rose’s mom was not in contest with being involved in it.  


“Yeah, in this version of the universe apparently,” she said casually. Dave groaned, running his hands through his hair before flopping down onto the couch next to her.  


“You guys aren’t going to leave, are you?” he asked, trying to not sound as desperate and hopeless as he felt about this whole thing. He really should just call the police like Rose said, like seriously, what the fuck was he thinking? But for some reason he just didn’t think that would be a good idea. It wasn’t that he believed them, hell no, but there was definitely something weird as fuck going on. He was just gonna… reserve judgment for now.  


“So, what is it that we’re doing here? Am I just giving you all a place to crash for an infinite amount of time or is there some sort of plan going down that I should know about?” Dave asked, watching as Terezi had reached down to pick up the remote once again.  


“I don’t exactly know the plan, but I figured that we should probably try to find the other kids and if anyone else managed to end up in this universe, but it sounds like Aradia’s on that so we’re good for now,” Terezi told him.  


“So how do I know you’re all really aliens? I mean fairy girl in there can fly so that’s a pretty convincing argument, but how do I know you guys aren’t just wearing cheap costumes and tagging along all Halloween trick-or-treater style,” Dave asked, reaching over to grab her horn to see if it was actually real. Before he was able to he felt sharp teeth lightly pinch into his skin, and he near instantly drew his hand back.  


“Ouch, what the actual fuck!? What are you, some kind of dog?” he asked, examining his hand. It really wasn’t that bad, just a few scratches from when he pulled back bleeding the tiniest bit. They definitely weren’t bite marks you’d expect from a person though. They looked sharp like he ran his hand under a couple of needles.  


“How’s that proof for you?” she asked back, a genuine shit eating grin on her face. The smile then dropped for a second, almost a look of realization, before getting replaced with something even more terrifying, if that was even possible. “Oh my god Dave! Let me taste it!” she demanded. Dave drew his hand as far into his chest as he could, practically recoiling half way across the sofa at that.  


“What the fuck, no. What the hell is wrong with you?” he refused, watching as her face once again dropped into a frown, although this time it stayed there.  


“Come on Dave, I’m not going to hurt you, I’ve just been wondering for a long time what human blood tastes like! It smells absolutely decadent,” she said, but Dave was not about that shit, quickly getting up from the couch and heading towards the kitchen to get these cuts taken care of, hoping that would take the alien chick off his back about this. Because seriously, blood tasting was definitely not on the list of things he was willing to put up with while they stayed here.  


“Oh fuck no, what even are you? Some kind of alien vampire, because I am so not into that shit it’s like, fucking Dave repellant right there. Like if some CEO types dudes were all sitting around a table going, well shit, we need something to keep Dave Strider away from our office or else he’s gonna take over the corporate world with his charm and finesse, all they’d have to do would be all ‘let’s demand he lets us go all blood play on him’ and shit they’d have control of their precious stock market back safe and sound,” Dave rambled, rinsing his hand under the sink for a moment before taking it out and drying it on some paper towels. Terezi had followed him, listening to his rant before rolling her eyes.  


“You are so overdramatic cool kid. Why can’t I get a single candy red knight to just give me a little taste, so unfair,” she complained. Gamzee was looking over at them now, but Dave ignored him as he headed back into the living room, a paper towel pressed to the small cuts.  


“Ya know I’m starting to think that’s the least of our problems. I mean shit, I already told you Bro could be home whenever the fuck, and the dude is cool and all but hell even he’ll question who you all are and where the fuck you came from,” he told her, sitting back down on the couch and throwing the remote at the girl as she followed him.  


“Your human lusus? He’s totally awesome though! I’m sure he’ll be cool with it,” she insisted, catching the remote before it could hit her. Okay, no fucking way she was blind. She sat down on the couch next to him, flipping the remote before stopping on a channel that had one of those shitty courtroom drama shows playing. Dave couldn’t help but notice the way her entire body perked up as she leaned closer to the TV. 

“Oh Dave! What is this? It looks like a legislacerator block!” she said excitedly.  


“Okay, I don’t know what that word’s supposed to mean but it’s just some shitty court drama, like a knock-off Judge Judy. What is this even playing at this time for don’t these things normally run in the mornings or whatever?” he asked, but Terezi didn’t seem to mind him at all. 

“Who is this Judy you speak of? Are they anything like His Honorable Tyranny?” she asked, and Dave just shrugged.  


“Yeah, that sounds about right. But back to the matter at hand here, I mean seriously we can’t let Bro see you guys, it’s not gonna happen alright?” he insisted. Terezi groaned as she answered him.  


“Fine! We won’t let your totally awesome Lusus see us okay? We’ll just hide or something,” Terezi conceded, but Dave was already shaking his head.  


“The dude’s got webcams everywhere, and the door is still a mess and fuck if he won’t notice something’s a god damn miss here,” he told her, trying to keep himself from panicking again. Fuck, should he go and try to dismantle all of the webcams? What if the footage of them is already on Bro’s computer? They would have to go and delete it, but then he might notice. Shit, shit, shit this was bad. There was no way in hell Bro wasn’t going to notice.  


“Well we’ll figure something out together. We dealt with much tougher problems than how to hide a couple of things before, you know,” Terezi reassured him.  


“Yeah, you’re gonna have to fill me in on these master plans we’d concocted, because they seem to have slipped my mind along with all of the other bullshit you’ve been talking about,” he told her. “Like seriously, I’m pretty confused about all this junk you keep going on about, there doesn’t seem to be a common thread here, we contacted each other through a video game in another universe?”  


“Uggg, it’s kind of complicated, but yeah that’s the basis I guess? I mean the game does a lot of stuff, like it made you guys gods and things? And gave you all your cool godtier powers?” she said, moving her arms around in a way that Dave supposed was meant to imitate whatever ‘cool powers’ this weird thing had given him.  


“Gods? Okay now I know you’re shitting me, did you get that from my chumhandle or something?” he asked, and Terezi looked irritated as she turned towards him, apparently having gotten rather into the dumb court show.  


“No, godtier, it’s something in the game, you four all managed to make it, but only a few of us did, like Aradia,” she explained. Dave blinked for a moment before nodding.  


“Oh right, she’d mentioned something like that, hadn’t she?” he asked. “Like, that’s why she had wings or something?” Terezi nodded in agreement.  


“Yeah, although humans don’t seem to get the cool wings when they go godtier,” she said.  


“Aw shit I don’t get magical fairy wings this blows,” he complained, finally turning his attention back to his phone in order to get back to Rose. He figured he’d left her hanging long enough and should probably not leave her wondering all night. Plus she probably wanted to get to sleep soon and he shouldn’t wait too long or he chanced waking her up again.  


“So you’ll help me round all of you up before Bro get home and try to conceal as much of the damage and signs of you all being here as possible?” he asked as he started typing. Terezi nodded, not turning away from the television.  


“Sure thing cool kid, it’s the least we can do for helping us not get completely obliterated,” she told him, and Dave tried not to sigh at the strange as fuck answer. He really shouldn’t have expected anything different after all, but still, this was certainly going to take some getting used to.  


And god fucking damn it all, it seemed like he was going to have the time to get used to it too.  


\---  


For a few moments she was extremely disoriented, pushing herself off of the pine covered ground and trying to figure out what had just happened. She could see tall trees all around her, and it seemed that wherever the scratch had dropped her off, it was not her nice desert home.  


“What the bloody hell is goin on here?” Kanaya instantly stiffened at the loud complaining voice behind her, reaching for her lipstick as she spun around. Her hand came back empty however, and searching through her pockets found no sign of the weapon.  


Eridan certainly didn’t seem to be in any position to be attacking anyone either though, the boy struggling to stand up as his ridiculous cape was caught up in some bushes. Eventually he managed to get the fabric loose and step forward, only then noticing Kanaya standing a few feet away from him. She couldn’t help but take just the slightest bit of joy in seeing the absolute horror that flashed on his face when he caught sight of her.  


“Kanaya? Did the plan work?” Once again she found herself turning at another familiar voice, although this one was met with much less hostility. Feferi was brushing pine needles out of her skirt as she turned her attention to the other girl.  


“I think it may have this does not feel like a dreambubble at all,” Kanaya told her, examining her surroundings a bit more now. It was nearly dark, and there did not seem to be any clear markers around them, just many trees of which Kanaya had never seen on Alternia before. She remembered there’d been trees such as this all around Rose’s home on her planet.  


“What plan? Think you could get me out of the dark on all this?” Eridan asked, and both girl’s found themselves turning to glare at the boy.  


“I hadn’t considered the fact that this may have brought you back to life too,” Kanaya admitted. Feferi sighed, crossing her arms as she examined him.  


“What do you think we should do about him?” she asked, and Eridan took a few steps back, holding his hands up in front of him and nearly tripping over the uneven forest ground.  


“Now, now ladies, let’s not be hasty here! I was wrong, and completely overreacted on the meteor, how about we just put it all under the bridge, huh?” he asked. Kanaya frowned in irritation, trying to figure out what they could do. She supposed she could kill him, although it would be more difficult without her chainsaw. For some reason she was unable to access her sylladex, and she didn’t know if Feferi was in the same predicament. Of course, that most likely meant that Eridan couldn’t either.  


They could just leave him here, but right now they weren’t even sure where ‘here’ was.  


“I would like you to give us one good reason why we should not just leave you here,” Kanaya said at last. Some of the worried tension seemed to drop out of Eridan at the realization that they were not about to simply kill him outright.  


“Well maybe if you all let me know what’s goin on here I could help you in some way,” he responded, actually sounding rather sincere. Kanaya was not about to be fooled by him if this was all a trick, but she really doubted that he was in any position at this point to do anything dastardly.  


Sharing a glance with Feferi, she figured it would at least be alright to let him in on what happened.  


“We had helped the humans scratch their session, and there was supposed to be a part that would scratch ours as well, allowing all of us to return to our universe, but with our memories intact,” Kanaya summarized. Eridan’s eyebrows raised in surprise, the boy looking genuinely impressed.  


“Well damn, the humans though a this plan?” he asked, and both Feferi and Kanaya nodded.  


“Yep! And it seems like it worked just shell too!” Feferi said happily.  


“For the most part at least, do either of you have any idea where we are?” Kanaya asked. Both Feferi and Eridan frowned as they looked around the area as well.  


“Hmm, no, I’ve never been anywhere like this before,” Feferi admitted.  


“Like hell you haven’t, what the good fuck is that thing?” Eridan asked, pointing up into the sky when the two girls looked over at him. Kanaya quickly got into a fighting stance as she looked where he was pointing, although she relaxed slightly when she saw just what it was.  


“I believe that is the moon,” she told him. The two other trolls looked over at her incredulously, Eridan scoffing as he started up again.  


“That sure as hell don’t look like no moon I’ve seen. It’s fuckin white Kan!” he insisted, and she could see Feferi nodding in agreement.  


“It is the moon on the human’s planet, I remember seeing it when watching Rose on the viewport,” Kanaya elaborated. She remembered what she’d thought earlier, about this forest being very similar to the one which had surrounded her human friend’s home, and felt a sinking suspicion in the pit of her digestion sac.  


“Wait just what is that supposed to mean now? Why would the human moon be hoverin all around Alterina?” Eridan asked.  


“I hate to say this, but Eridan’s right. Just what is that doing here?” Feferi added. Kanaya thought for a moment, trying to word herself carefully so that neither of them would panic too much at what she believed to be happening here.  


“There may be a slight chance that we are not on Alternia, I suppose. This forest is very similar to the one I had observed on Earth,” she explained at last. Eridan instantly spun around, kicking angrily at the bush that had previously held his cape captive.  


“Fuckin hell! Of course a plan made up by those stinkin humans would backfire in such a magnificently horrible way!” he ranted, although for the most part Kanaya attempted to ignore him. Instead she turned towards Feferi, hoping that between the two of them they could work through this problem.  


“Are you sure that’s what might be going on here Kanaya? That reel-ly doesn’t sound like a good thing,” Feferi asked her, and she found herself nodding. For some reason the more she thought about it the more she was certain that this was exactly what was happening.  


“Yes I do believe that might be correct. We should attempt to get out of this forest and find someone if we want to prove whether or not it is true, though,” she said. Feferi quickly nodded in agreement, but before she could vocalize that Eridan groaned as he turned back towards the two girls.  


“Exactly which way is out of here then Kan?” he practically demanded, and she chose not to answer him for a few moments, instead glaring at the troll. Honestly, he’d never given her a reason why they shouldn’t just leave him, and she was still considering the option truthfully.  


“Er, I mean, I guess you would have no way to know that any more than anyone,” he added after a few seconds of her silent staring.  


“No I wouldn’t, so perhaps we should just start out. Hopefully if I am correct we are indeed near Rose’s hive and will run into it sooner than not,” she said, not giving much thought into which direction she was going as she started walking. Even if she had thought each direction through, it wouldn’t have done any good since she had no frame of reference as to where she was.  


Feferi quickly started after her, happily going on about how they were sure to find something, Eridan following a few moments later. The troll boy didn’t say anything as he walked a few paces behind them, except for the occasional curse as he had to tear his cape away from snags from branches and such.  


The three ended up walking for several hours, the large moon gradually working its way across the sky. Kanaya was seriously considering for a while that they were going in circles, but she supposed she did not know how large this forest was or have any way to tell if they were passing the same spots as everything looked the same to her.  


“How long is it going to take to get out of these god damn trees! Honestly are we even goin in the right direction?” Eridan asked loudly. Kanaya tried to keep herself from groaning outright at the boy, this had not been the first time him having asked something along those lines. Before she was able to say anything, Feferi spun on her heals to face the other troll, obviously having also reached her wits ends with the boy as well.  


“We will get there when we get there and your complaining is dolphinitely not helping one bit!” she yelled, and Eridan quickly shut his mouth on whatever it was he’d been about to say, the boy quietly grumbling to himself instead. There was prbably no way to stop that however, and Kanaya supposed she could block it out well enough.  


Kanaya couldn’t help but feel a bit of relief wash through her as the trees started thinning out slightly, especially since the sky was starting to lighten up considerably. She did not know much about the Earth’s sun, and even if she could most likely easily deal with the light, that didn’t mean her two companions could if it was anything like the sun back on Alterina.  


When a large house started to peak out between the trees, Kanaya felt a smile break out over her face. It was basically confirmation that they were all trapped in another universe, which certainly was not a good thing, but at least they could find some comfort with people who would actually understand the situation and could help them out.  


And if she was being completely honest with herself, she’d never cared all that much for the part of the plan that involved being forever separated from the humans.  


\--- 

“Is everything all right Rose?” Kanaya asked, looking up from the computer. Feferi quickly started taking over typing for her while she spoke. It looked like there was someone speaking back, so it was probably safe to assume they had gotten in contact with this John.  


“Yes, Dave was just being… Dave,” she finally said, adjusting her headband back into place. Kanaya nodded, looking as though she understood.  


“Ah yes, Strider was always rather strange. I don’t think I’m suited to understand the layers of irony he employs,” she said. Rose sat down on the bed behind them, casually attempting to read off of the screen, although it was difficult with the other two trolls starting to get into a slight argument over who gets to type.  


“You all sure seem to know a lot about us. It appears Dave has accepted everything the ones at his house have told him, but I’m going to try to remain skeptical for a bit longer,” Rose told her.  


“Well we had spoken quite a bit over a chat client when playing our respective games, but since you will not believe me at the moment I don’t know what to tell you. For some reason you are always so reluctant to believe very simple concepts at the beginning but you tend to come around so I am just going to wait for that to happen once again,” Kanaya said.  


“Oh, what had I been skeptical about last time?” Rose asked. Leaning forward, she was able to see the computer screen, but found herself a bit perplexed with the writing. Why were there parentheses everywhere? Okay that was really difficult to understand, she would just ask for a synopsis of the conversation once they were finished. Instead she turned to place her attention back to Kanaya.  


“Time travel, and also the fact that we were not from your universe,” Rose nodded, because yeah those really did not sound like things she would believe right off the bat in any universe.  


“You people time travel?”  


“Oh no not this again. No we do not time travel, or well, only one of us does, but so does one of yours so it’s really not all that special. We were using a chat client that allowed us to speak to you during any moment in your timeline,” Kanaya explained.  


“Ah, I see. Wait, one of us time travels? I’m starting to feel like I might be getting in over my head here,” Rose said, trying to keep herself from laughing. This was all just so ridiculous, but they all seemed so convinced it was true, not to mention the fact that the closer she looked the less their strange features seemed like costumes. Either that or they were professional makeup artists.  


“Yes Dave is the Knight of Time. Honestly I have never seen someone exploit time travel to such an extent it was quite a spectacle, I have no idea how he and Terezi managed to keep track of it all,” she said.  


“Dave? Oh dear,” Rose muttered, just trying to imagine whatever ‘spectacle’ Kanaya had alluded to. Really, the only thing she could think of was a bunch of Daves popping in and out of existence doing meaningless tasks.  


“Okay! Sollux, Vriska and Tavros are all with John and seem to be doing swimmingly for the most part, although John doesn’t sound too happy,” Feferi interrupted them. Rose turned towards her, trying to keep a smile on her face as she went over the number. So there were twelve of these people in all?  


“Thank you, do you think I could try to talk to him for a moment?” She asked, and Feferi nodded, picking up the laptop and handing to over to Rose.  


“Shore thing Rose!” she said happily. Rose very quickly scanned the screen, just finding a rather hard to read conversation up on the screen. Asking the trolls which screenname was the correct one, she started typing a message to this boy who was probably about as confused as Dave had been yesterday.  


TentacleTherapist started pestering EctoBiologist at 4:02pm  
TT: Hello, I understand your name is John?  
EB: oh man please tell me you aren’t another troll. i’m about at my wits end with trolls right now.  
TT: No I’m not a troll, honestly I can relate.  
TT: My friend started messaging me last night about all of this, and this morning I woke up to find three strange visitors at my doorstep.  
EB: oh man really?  
EB: i was suddenly getting messages from people i didn’t know asking how to get to my house and stuff.  
EB: but then they managed to find me anyway.  
EB i’m just so glad my dad was at work i think he would have had a heart attack if he’d been the one opening the door.  
EB: but uh, who exactly are you? Since you know about the trolls and stuff and have some at your house too.  
TT: I’m Rose, if your visitors are anything like mine I’m going to assume they’ve mentioned me.  
EB: oh okay yeah they have!  
EB: i was just talking to karkat about you.  
EB: they also mentioned someone named dave, and that you know him?  
TT: Yes.  
TT: It is certainly an experience.  
EB: heh, i haven’t talked to him yet.  
EB: i think they tried to message me earlier but i was kind of having a crisis, so i just immediately blocked them.  
EB: i guess i should undo that now, probably.  
TT: He’ll be fine for a while longer, don’t worry about it.  
TT: I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you know a Jade in a similar predicament as our own.  
EB: oh yeah!  
EB: man jade was so pissed.  
EB: apparently one of them wasn’t being very nice when she insisted she didn’t know him.  
TT: That’s what I heard.  
EB: you’ve talked to jade?  
TT: No, Dave did.  
EB: oh okay.  
TT: So, according to the ‘trolls’ that would be all of them accounted for with the ones also at your friend’s house.  
TT: Any idea what we’re supposed to do now?  
EB: um, i don’t know.  
EB: this one with jade, his name’s karkat, said that we all need to get together.  
EB: but i told him jade lives all the way on an island and that would be really hard.  
EB: around where do you live? if that’s like, not too creepy to ask or anything.  
TT: Not at all, under the circumstances.  
TT: New York.  
EB: okay that’s not going to work.  
EB: i live in washington.  
EB: the state. not the, uh, not state.  
TT: Yes, and Dave is in Texas, so unless someone has a lot of extra money for plane tickets and some form of identification for these trolls, it’s probably not going to work out.  
EB: oh god yeah i didn’t even think of like, ids and stuff.  
EB: i think they’re really aliens too  
EB: one of them at my house can fly, and another has like, telekinesis lasers.  
EB: It’s pretty awesome.  
TT: Dave said one of his could fly too.  
TT: And you’ve seen these powers actually working? Not some kind of party trick?  
EB: it seemed totally legit.  
EB: and i’m into magic so i’m pretty sure I would have been able to tell if they were faking it.  
TT: Well, that changes things slightly.  
EB: did you not believe them about being aliens?  
TT: Not exactly.  
TT: They only showed up this morning, I haven’t had much time to really evaluate the situations.  
TT: And frankly, Dave tends to exaggerate.  
EB: oh, that makes sense then, i didn’t believe them at first either.  
EB: but then telekinesis lasers happened.  
TT: Yes, telekinesis lasers do sound like a game changer.  
EB: oh, did they tell you we all apparently have these awesome superpowers?  
EB: like some kind of superhero anime squad.  
TT: Is that so?  
EB: Yeah, it has something to do with this game thing they keep talking about.  
EB: I mean, I don’t really know if I believe everything they say but  
EB: but  
EB: uhhh  
EB: i think i need to go  
TT: Something the matter?  
EB: i just heard something crash down the stairs.  
TT: Oh dear.  
TT: I could have warned you about the stairs, John.  
EB: haha, oh gosh you read that shitty web comic too?  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Dave is very proud of it.  
EB: oh wow  
EB: i’m getting a feeling that i really need to talk to this guy soon.  
TT: Go tend to your mysterious stairway crashing first.  
EB: oh righ!  
EB: bye rose, nice meeting you!  
ectoBiologist ceased pestering tentacleTherapist  


Rose looked up from her computer, carefully watching the trolls around her. She did not want to accept that what they were saying was real just because of this one random person over the internet, but this was definitely way too elaborate for a prank, that was simply out of the question at this point.  


“About fuckin time, can we figure out what we’re supposed to be doin about this mess now?” Eridan moaned, having moved to lean against Rose’s dresser. Rose sighed, there was something about this guy that irritated her, although that really did not seem to be a unique response, but considering what Dave had said about him, she was starting to think she understood even more now why the other two girls had said they had every right to leave him in the woods.  


“That was what I was trying to do, I figured it might be important to find out who the people we’re going to have to be working with are, after all,” she told him. The fish boy crossed his arms, rolling his eyes slightly.  


“They’re just another worthless human the only important thing is that they have a couple of our men stayin with them at the moment,” he insisted, “what I was talkin about was figurin out how to send us back to our universe, if that’s even an option anymore.”  


“Back to your universe? I really don’t know how we’re supposed to be accomplishing that,” Rose said.  


“I was thinking we should meet up but John said that would be diffishcult,” Feferi added. Rose nodded, although ‘diffishcult’ was probably an understatement, especially considering some of them were on an island somewhere.  


“It would be practically impossible at the moment, considering it would involve some of us having to get on planes or boats, and you all would need identification for that,” Rose explained.  


“Oh dear, what do you think we should do for the moment then?” Kanaya asked.  


“For the moment? I suppose figuring out what kinds of earth utilities are compatible for your species. You all look mostly human, but if it’s true and you really are aliens then I don’t want to accidently poison any of you with some stray chocolate or hair spray,” Rose answered, starting to head towards her door. At least, that was the only thing she could think of doing at the moment, attempting to remain calm and doing rather a good job of it.  


The trolls started following her out of the room, Eridan demanding that he better not end up getting sick on this lousy planet and Feferi talking excitedly about trying new earth things and becoming more ‘multicultural.’ Kanaya sighed and followed behind, seeming to keep a special eye on Eridan as she did so. Dave had said that she would be the one to handle things if the boy had managed to go on ‘another murder spree.’  


What were they even supposed to test first? Food probably? But how were they supposed to do that without them just eating it, which could possibly kill them. She probably needed to ask them about what they ate on their planet, and other basic functioning’s they had. How much did they sleep? Were they tired from wandering around in the woods all night? Did the two sea based ones need water?  


Heading to the kitchen, Rose decided it would be best to just take this one step at a time, and try to find out as much as she can as soon as possible. She did not want to leave Dave any more time to attempt to experiment on his own, now that she thought about it.  


\--- 

Karkat swore he was screaming before he even had a full idea on what the fuck was going on. He was probably fucking dead and he was just yelling at himself in a dream bubble, but slowly his vision started to adjust from the gander bulb searing green and yellow static that had engulfed everyone to the cool darkness.  


Taking a deep breath, the troll tried to keep himself from screaming more nonsense for a moment, or at the very least become conscious of exactly what nonsense he was spouting, instead of having it just spew from him like water from a goddamn broken pipe.  


“What the fuck happened?” he managed to say after a moment, sure he’d probably asked that like a million fucking times during his unconscious ramblings but fuck it no one had answered him yet and if they did he hadn’t heard them.  


“To be purrfectly honest, I don’t have any idea,” a voice came from his left and Karkat felt himself jolt in surprise.  


“Holy fuck you’re alive again! Or I’m dead fuck it’s probably the second one isn’t it,” he said, watching as Nepeta pushed herself up off of the ground.  


“I would appreciate it if you did not use such language with my moirail,” Equius’ voice came from behind him, and Karkat once again spun around to look at the other troll, completely ignoring his absolutely irrational request. He could speak however the fuck he wanted to whoever the fuck, and it wasn’t any of this asshole’s business.  


“Shit, you’re here too? Okay, if we are actually alive and the human’s plan had managed to somehow fucking work despite all common sense pointing otherwise, everyone else should be around here somewhere, wherever the fuck here even is,” he said, more thinking out loud than actually talking to the other two trolls.  


“What human plan?” Nepeta asked, and Karkat tried to keep himself from getting too pissed off at having to explain this to someone once again, as if going over it a million times before they did the scratch wasn’t enough. Of course, these two had gone and died before they really started on it, and even though they’d worked with some of the ghosts to complete the whole thing, he really hadn’t heard from those two during all if that.  


“It was to get the scratch to affect both our sessions and reset them at once, in order to get everyone back to the right universe. And also I guess bring the people who died back to life and get us all to remember everything too? I didn’t think it was actually going to work and just end up fucking obliterating us all like the insignificant flecks of barely sentient life the game takes us for, but I guess if we’re not actually dead yet than maybe it actually did manage to work and we really are back on Alternia?” he explained to the two.  


“Something about this place does not feel like Alternia,” Equius said after a few moments, and Karkat rolled his eyes as he started forward, trying to see if he could find anyone else. Surely the scratch wouldn’t have dumped just the three of them in this completely arbitrary destination.  


“Have you ever been to any fucking jungles? Because I sure as fuck haven’t,” Karkat asked. Equius was hesitant for a moment before answering.  


“Well, no, but something still seemed off about this whole thing,” he told the shorter boy.  


“You’re probably not used to being alive again or something,” Karkat brushed it off. As the three continued walking, he started to find just how fucking impossible it was to make your way through most of this crap, and started taking to yelling the names of the other trolls. Nepeta quickly joined in, before attempting to extract her claws from her strife specibus in order to cut through some of the leaf ropes.  


“My strife specibus isn’t working,” she informed them, and Karkat quickly attempted to pull his sickle out of his own strife deck. When that failed, he tried to take anyone out of his sylladex in general.  


“What the absolute hell was going on here?” he blurted, repeatedly trying and failing to pull out something.  


“I believe I had told you before that something odd was ahoof,” Equius said, and Karkat fucking knew he did not imagine that bit of cockiness that tinted his voice.  


“Look, I never said I thought this idiotic as all fuck plan was going to go off without a hitch, I just don’t know how the sylladexes and strife specibi not working or your god damn feelings means it’s not fucking Alternia, hell, you’re probably right but I have no idea where the fuck we are if that’s the case!” he told him, turning around and trying to make his way through the continued vines and underbrush that blocked their path.  


He wasn’t sure how long they were walking before something flashed a bit out of their vision, but he instantly started towards it. Fuck, it would probably kill them if they weren’t already dead, but god damn it was something to head for instead of wondering aimlessly in this fucking jungle for all eternity, so he’ll take it.  


\---  


As soon as Jade was back in her room, she quickly went over to her dresser and grabbed her glasses. She was starting to get a headache without them. Although there was a chance that was simply because of that Karkat boy’s screaming.  


Looking back over to the other children, she was able to take them in in much more detail, even with only the light from the moon and stars shining in from her window, and what she saw confused her even more. Rubbing her eyes, she reached to turn on her bedside lamp, trying to get as clear of a look as possible. As soon as the light came on though, she was starting to wish she had kept them all in the dark instead.  


They were all wearing the most ridiculous costumes. They had their skin painted grey and bright orange horns sticking out of their heads. It also looked like they were wearing fangs and had put claws on their fingers. Karkat opened his mouth to start talking again, having appeared to regain his composure after the sudden teleportation, but before he was able to Jade couldn’t stop herself from laughing.  


“What the hell are you laughing about? We’re in a serious predicament here!” Karkat demanded, and Jade put her hand on her chest, raising the other one up so he would know to give her a moment as she attempted to pull herself together.  


“You all just look so ridiculous!” she managed to say after a few more shaky breaths. Karkat frowned, looking slightly offended, while Nepeta appeared confused, and Equius frowned in irritation, or at least that’s what she could guess. Honestly, all their reactions just made her start laughing once again.  


“Well that’s fucking rude, maybe you’re the one who looks ridiculous Jade, you don’t even have any horns how weird is that,” Karkat grumbled. Jade managed to stop laughing once again and tried to talk to him in a more serious manner.  


“Jeeze, sorry then, but I just didn’t really expect those costumes, okay? Now, you said you wanted to talk to John?” Jade slightly apologized, picking up her laptop from her bed side table.  


“They aren’t fucking costumes, we’re trolls, okay? Aliens from another universe, it’s really not that hard of a concept to understand,” Karkat continued to insist.  


“I’d behoove you to consider the strong possibility that she does not believe us do to the lack of a presence of the game in their new universe,” Equius said before Jade was able to answer Karkat. The shorter boy seemed about to start arguing with him, before thinking what he said over for a moment and sighing.  


“Yeah, I guess if she never even had Prospit to make her open to the idea of other universes at all it would be kind of a hard pill to swallow, especially for someone who’s species hasn’t even managed to make contact with any other sentient life forms,” Karkat conceded. Jade grumbled and decided to ignore them for now, opening her computer to try to get in contact with John, He wasn’t on pesterchum though, and looking at the time that really wasn’t a surprise. She sent him a message saying to get back to her as soon as he got the time before looking back up at the trolls.  


“John’s asleep, we won’t be able to talk to him until morning,” she told them truthfully. Karkat groaned and ran a hand down his face. From how hard he was doing the motion, it really should have messed up the face paint, but it looked as flawless as ever. Looking closely, their eyes were strange too, with the whites being orange and the pupils’ slits oddly shaped, but Jade decided that could be from contacts.  


“Hell fury fuck, what about Rose? Or god damn even Strider at this point, I guess,” Karkat asked. Jade blinked, those names not registering anything in her either.  


“I don’t know those people, sorry?” she said, once again receiving complete disbelief, as if she was the one saying weird things.  


“Oh hell fucking no, what the fuck do you mean you don’t know them? They’re the other fucking humans, there’s no way you managed to fuck up so much you haven’t even met the other players, I refuse to believe you could be that incompetent,” Karkat moaned. Jade huffed indignantly, crossing her arms and glaring at the shorter boy.  


“I am not incompetent for not knowing these weird random people you keep talking about! I live alone on an island how am I even supposed to meet them!” she yelled.  


“I never fucking left my hive either but you don’t see that making me a complete and utter shut in! It’s called the internet Jade, use it,” Karkat fought back. Jade rolled her eyes, because this was completely insane.  


“Stop yelling so loud, I said we can’t wake grandpa up,” she told him, not even about to argue on that last point because she very well could use the internet, that’s how she met John and she did not need to defend herself on something so basic.  


“I am not yelling, or well I could definitely yell louder, do not doubt me on this Jade, I am actually being very considerate with everything I’m doing right now, you do not even realize because for some reason you guys had to go and get your minds wiped with the fucking scratch,” Karkat insisted.  


“Uh, maybe we should try to figure out what we should do instead of arguing,” Nepeta cut in. Before Jade could say anything a ding sounded from her Pesterchum app.  


“Oh that’s probably John!” she said, quickly heading back to where she left her computer on her bed, Karkat following almost immediately behind her. She was half tempted to push him away, but before she was able to decide on going through with that action, she was distracted by seeing the message on her screen. That definitely wasn’t John, even from a glance without reading a single word she could figure that out, the color was all off.  


ApocalypseArisen started pestering gardengnostic at 3:26am  
AA: Hello Jade :)  
GG: um hello?  


She looked up from her screen, about to tell them that this wasn’t John, but the three trolls were already behind her, reading the message over her shoulder.  


“Oh thank fuck Aradia, someone sane,” Karkat mumbled, before freezing for a moment and adding “mostly.”  


“You guys know this person?” Jade asked, suddenly very unsure about this. She didn’t want to argue with more people who didn’t make any sense and thought they were aliens, even if their disguises were very well put together.  


“Oh my, um, yes,” Equius said, seeming nervous all of a sudden. Wow, if this person could scare him that was kind of frightening. Looking at this guy up close, he looked really strong.  


“Let me talk to her,” Karkat demanded, already reaching for the laptop before Jade could even answer.  


“Hey! Don’t just grab things that don’t belong to you! That’s very rude!” Jade yelled, grabbing her computer back from him. “Just for that you have to wait, I’m going to talk to her first,” she decided. Karkat stared at her incredulously as she started typing a reply to this Aradia girl, although he didn’t make any more moved to grab the computer from her, so she supposed that was a start.  


AA: I’m Aradia!  
AA: It’s very nice to meet you!  
GG: uh thank you  
GG: it’s nice to meet you too.  
GG: there are some people here who say they know you.  
AA: Oh!  
AA: That’s great. We were hoping that some of us would be at your hive.  
AA: who’s there?  
GG: their names are karkat equius and nepeta?  
GG: do you think you could tell me what’s going on?  
AA: Good, that’s half of us then, the others must be with John and Rose.  
AA: Sure thing Jade, but Karkat didn’t try to explain it to you?  
GG: oh he did but i don’t believe him!  
GG: plus he’s really rude and kinda grumpy.  
AA: Oh, you get used to it, don’t worry.  
AA: He’s really a nice guy when you get past all that.  
GG: i think i’ll hold off on believing that too for now.  
AA: Alright, but I’m not sure there’s much I can say that Karkat probably hasn’t already.  
AA: We are aliens from another universe, the game we played reset the universe and now you all seem to have forgotten.  
GG: URG!  
GG: not you too!  
GG: that’s just all so ridiculous how am i supposed to believe that!?  
AA: I’m really sorry Jade but it’s the truth.  
GG: but that just doesn’t make any sense!  
AA: I understand that it does seem a little far fetched, but maybe just try to consider it for a while and see what you think.  
GG: whatever i guess.  
GG: karkat wants to talk to you so i’m going to let him on now.  


Jade sighed in annoyance, looking over at Karkat who was sitting on the bed behind her, frowning but otherwise not making any move to say anything. Without saying a word either, she handed the computer over to him, practically dumping it into his lap. The boy blinked in confusion for a moment, before realizing what she was doing and starting to type furiously on her computer to the other girl. Jesus, it sounded like he was going to smash the poor keyboard to shreds.  


Jade looked over to the other two teens. Nepeta was also sitting on the edge of her bed, and Equius was standing slightly awkwardly a little off to the side of the small girl.  


“Um, I’m not entirely sure where you guys can sleep,” Jade said, looking around her room, hoping that three extra beds would just appear out of thin air. Now that she was thinking about it again, she was exhausted. It was nearly four in the morning after all. She really shouldn’t have gotten up so early yesterday.  


“Oh that’s fine! Humans don’t have recupracoons anyway, we can just make ourselves some nice fluffy piles to sleep in, you have so many absolutely purrfect little toys,” Nepeta told her happily. Jade tried not to get annoyed at more alien talk, since Nepeta did seem really nice, if a little odd like the rest of them.  


“Um, alright, I’m going to go get you guys some extra blankets anyway though, I guess,” Jade said, quickly heading out to where she was pretty sure they kept extra blankets and such. Thankfully, there were quite a few there, and she grabbed up three of them and a few pillows before heading back to her room.  


When she came in, everyone was pretty much in the same places as they were before, although she just noticed that Bec must have left sometime when she was arguing with Karkat. Dropping the pillows and blankets on the floor, she walked over to where the boy with the computer was typing away, and this time she was the one reading over his shoulder. What she read really didn’t make much sense though, just a lot of jumbled terms and names of people she had never heard of before. He wasn’t talking to Aradia anymore though, instead someone who typed in teal and with a whole bunch of weird numbers in their words, making it a bit difficult to understand.  


“Urg, Strider wants to talk to you, but fuck him I’m trying to get stuff done here,” Karkat told her.  


“Is he another weird alien person?” Jade asked, because that was pretty much the deciding factor on whether or not she was all that interested in talking to this guy. She was about at her wits ends with strange alien people at the moment. She would probably be more up for it once she got some sleep, but it didn’t seem like that was going to happen anytime soon.  


“Fuck no, he’s human like you. Terezi, Aradia and Gamzee are stuck at his hive right now,” Karkat explained. Jade actually perked up at that. From the sound of it, it seemed like this guy was in a similar position as her right about now, and she could frankly use a little comradery.  


“Let me talk to him,” she demanded, and Karkat practically hugged the laptop to his chest as he shook his head.  


“Fuck no, I’m busy here, I haven’t been able to hear from at least half of our people and I need to stay on in case they try to contact me,” he told her. Jade huffed and got up from the bed, heading over to where she kept a spare, older computer in her closet.  


“Here, you can use this to keep in contact with your ‘people’ okay? Let me use my computer,” she told him, and reluctantly Karkat nodded, typing on the computer for a second longer, presumably telling them that he was going to be switching devices. A few seconds later he handed her the computer, and she gave him the older laptop before turning to her screen.  


It looked like Karkat had taken the time to sign into his own account, which she quickly logged out of.  


“What’s his chum handle?” Jade asked.  


“Wait a second he should be contacting you any minute,” Karkat told her. Equius and Nepeta were huddled around him now, reading over the conversation he seemed to be having. Before Jade was able to say anything back to the group of trolls, a notification sounded on her computer alerting her to an incoming message.  


TG: yo im told this is jade  
TG: im also told youre dealing with a bunch of crazies too  
GG: yes!  
GG: hi i’m jade and i am losing my mind over here!  
TG: yeah totally feel you on that  
TG: names dave by the way  
TG: did they break your door down too  
GG: no oh gosh that sounds horrible!  
GG: my dog brought me to them and i snuck them inside while my grandpa was asleep.  
GG: i’m starting to think i should have just left them in the forest though.  
TG: oh wow you got family home and theyre there  
TG: good luck on that man  
TG: im pretty sure my bro will be suspicious in negative seconds after he gets here  
TG: on account of only half the door still being on its hinges  
GG: yeah that really doesn’t sound good :(  
GG: are they telling you crazy stories about being aliens too?  
TG: yeah  
TG: but between you and me im starting to think they might not actually be that crazy  
GG: what really?  
GG: i don’t believe a word of it!  
TG: yeah no i didn’t either  
TG: but hear me out on this  
TG: one of them can fly  
TG: like straight up hovering in the air as we speak  
TG: wings and everything  
GG: are you being serious right now :/  
TG: yeah  
TG: also the teeth are real  
TG: my fucking hand can vouch for that shit  
GG: ouch  
TG: yeah no fucking kidding  
GG: i still don’t know though.  
GG: it really doesn’t make any sense.  
TG: yeah no all that game shit they keep going on about and universes resetting and all that bull  
TG: i have no fucking idea what any of thats about  
TG: but they know a lot about us and they probably arent human  
TG: so just take that as you will  
GG: urg i am way too tired for this!  
GG: it’s almost four in the morning and karkat yells a lot and i don’t know what to think anymore!  
GG: i want to go to sleep :(  
TG: shit four in the morning where the fuck do you live  
TG: its like eleven here  
GG: on an island in the pacific  
GG: i live with my grandpa and i have no idea how they managed to reach the island.  
TG: oh yeah that would explain time zones  
TG: and im not saying theyre aliens  
TG: but have you considered aliens  
GG: i’m tired of considering aliens.  
TG: yeah ive pretty much resigned to the fact that im not sleeping tonight  
TG: but maybe you should just yell at shouty to shut the fuck up and go to sleep  
TG: if theres not like  
TG: a chance of suddenly grandpa in your room in the morning  
TG: comin in all like  
TG: wake up jade my sweet precious granddaughter  
TG: oh fuck are those aliens  
TG: suddenly heart attack  
GG: lol  
GG: i don’t think that’ll happen  
GG: bec is the one who usually wakes me up.  
GG: and i think Grandpa would just shoot them.  
TG: hot damn  
TG: well then seems like you got it all taken care of over there  
TG: maybe try and get some sleep then sounds like you need it  
GG: yeah i think you might be right.  
GG: thanks dave! it was really nice to meet you!  
TG: likewise  
TG: have fun with your new aliens  
GG: :(  
gardenGnostic ceased pestering turntechGodhead  


“I’m going to bed,” Jade announced as she shut her laptop, placing it on the bed side table once again. “You guys can use this computer now and keep messing around with them if you want, but I need to sleep. You also have to stay quiet, I don’t want my grandpa finding you all, okay?” she finished. Karkat nodded, taking the computer she had set down and handing it to Nepeta.  


“Yeah, yeah we got it your highness, no noise,” he said, and Jade rolled her eyes, turning off her bedside lamp and laying back down in her bed, quickly pulling the blankets up over her head to block out any of the light from the computer screens. She could still hear the distinct clacking of the keys as they typed but soon enough she was able to drown that out.  


Honestly, she did not think she would have been able to fall asleep any time soon, with all of the thoughts running through her mind. She did not want to believe a single word these people said, but that Dave guy told her to reconsider. Plus what, they could fly? Maybe? Bluh, it was all so confusing and she couldn’t think about it right now. Within a few minutes, she was able to fall asleep, having come to the conclusion that she could deal with all of this in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise more things will start happening soon, this just require a lot of build up in order to get everyone up to speed on what is happening. As always thanks so much for reading and please let me know what you think.


	4. Chapter 3- Closer Still

Dave had Terezi help him check the rooms for any of Bro’s webcams, although he didn’t know if turning them off would be a good idea or not. It probably would have made him set up probably double the amount of cameras.  


In the end, they managed to delete the last couple of hours’ worth of footage off of his computer and turn off about half of the webcams, making it easier for them to avoid being seen for the most part.  


Once things were about as good as Dave supposed they could get, he went to go see how Aradia was doing in his room. Terezi followed him in, while he could see that Gamzee had moved into the living room now, but decided to ignore him. For the most part, he hadn’t done anything worrying besides being unsettling for no real reason.  


“What’s up, were you able to get in touch with whoever it was you were trying to talk to?” Dave asked as he walked into the room, draping himself over the back of his chair in order to read over Aradia’s shoulder. She was talking to someone who seemed to have a problem with the caps locks, although he wasn’t really able to follow whatever it was they were actually talking about, probably alien stuff with alien words and alien people.  


“Oh yes, Jade was a bit skeptical about us though, so it seems that the amnesia has affected all of you, unfortunately. I’m talking to Karkat now though, since he wanted a headcount of everyone,” Aradia filled him in.  


“Wait, so this Jade girl is dealing with crazy aliens invading her home uninvited too?” he asked, Terezi elbowing him in the side as he did. It wasn’t actually all that painful, and something told him that if she wanted to that really could have hurt, so he decided he was probably in the clear.  


“Well, yes, I suppose you could put it like that,” Aradia answered.  


“Cool let me talk to her,” he demanded.  


“Alright, just let me tell Karkat,” she said, turning back towards the computer and apparently typing in Dave’s request. “He says she’s gone to grab something real quick, also that he doesn’t care what you want to do, he’s doing something important so you can wait,” she relayed after Karkat had messaged her back.  


“Well tell him it’s my computer so he can suck it,” Dave responded. After a little while though the alien boy on the other end of the chat must have given up the computer because Aradia let him start to talk to Jade. She seemed pretty nice, he definitely felt for her on this whole ordeal, especially since it was fuck o’clock in the morning for her. He wasn’t sure how he managed to be the one arguing on behalf of these guys being legit, but hey, when the evidence is there what are ya gonna do, just ignore it? Well according to a lot of things yes but not this time.  


Dave allowed for both Terezi and Aradia to get back on the computer after that. They apparently went to message someone named John who would also be dealing with some friendly alien invaders, but he blocked them without saying a word. Dave had to admit, he was impressed with how little shits the guy seemed willing to put up with, especially since Terezi had messaged him first.  


He was sitting on his bed telling Terezi to stop messing around with his stuff when Gamzee strolled into the room, closing the door behind him.  


“Hey, I think your motherfucking lusus might have up and come home,” Gamzee said. Dave felt his stomach drop out from under him, jumping off the bed in an instant. Before he went into full blown panic mode he decided to see if maybe what Gamzee said wasn’t what Dave thought he meant.  


“What’s a lusus?” he asked, hoping beyond hope that some sort of stray cat or bird or a fucking homeless man had wandered into the apartment instead of who he was pretty sure he was talking about.  


“He means your bro Dave,” Terezi clarified.  


“Fucking shit, shit, shit, did he see you? Quick, closet all of you,” Dave demanded, speaking in a whisper and pushing them towards his makeshift closet turned darkroom.  


“Nah my brother, just heard the dude comin’ towards the door so I all up and came to tell y’all,” Gamzee told him, at least quelling that immediate fear. Although that still begs the question how the fuck did he manage to hear Bro? Maybe it wasn’t Bro and this was all just a false alarm, but like fuck was he going to take his chances on that being the case.  


“Jeeze cool kid, calm down, what’s the big deal?” Terezi asked, although she was still going along with where he was leading them, thank all that is holy. Dave was still freaking about how loud she was being though, not to mention the fact that Bro would definitely see the door still ripped in half.  


“Bro cannot see you guys, we’ve been over this, no if ands or buts about it. So stay the fuck in here and don’t make a sound, alright,” Dave told them, closing the door once they were all in the closet, not waiting for anyone to answer. Outside, he heard moving around, and took a deep breath, attempting to steal himself for heading out there. Okay, he could totally do this, just mosey along like oh hey Bro, how was your day? Cool, cool. Door? What door? I have no idea what you’re talking about. We never had a door.  


Dave slowly crept out of his room, peaking around the hallway to see Bro standing in the center of the living room, holding the half a door that had been left leaning against the wall. The older man must have immediately noticed he was there, turning towards him without putting the splintering plywood down.  


Bro was not a guy who showed a lot of emotion, that just wasn’t something Striders were about, but this was honestly the most confused Dave had ever seen him, one eyebrow raised way above his shades, very clearly silently asking Dave what the fuck was going on.  


“Telemarketers,” came tumbling out of the teen’s mouth before he could think the word through. Bro’s face went from pure confusion to incredulous at Dave’s frankly very lame excuse.  


“At the door?” Bro questioned, and Dave silently cursed himself, but started nodding anyway. Well, there wasn’t anything else he could do but go down with the ship at this point. Fucking aliens and their inability to wait five fucking seconds for someone to come and answer the door.  


“Yeah, it was crazy man, I don’t even know what they were selling, new doors I think,” he fumbled, trying not to wince at the poor as shit lie. Bro continued to stare at him, but Dave forced himself to just stare back, not about to break. If he wanted the truth he would have to go into his closet and find the aliens himself (oh god oh god please don’t let Bro find the aliens himself).  


Slowly, Bro placed the door back onto the ground, breaking the staring contest. Fuck yes. Although this clearly wasn’t over by a long shot, but that meant Bro wasn’t going to push it for now, or at least he hoped not.  


“Shoulda brought one from ‘em,” was all he said after a moment, walking over to lean the half door back against the wall. Dave shrugged, starting to edge back towards his room.  


“Yeah, they didn’t seem like the most credible source though,” Dave said, carefully looking back between Bro and his bedroom, hoping beyond hope that the trolls would just stay in the closet and not try anything. He was almost free this would be the time when they’d come out and ruin everything.  


“No kidding,” was all Bro said before leaving the living room, heading into the kitchen to rummage through a couple of drawers. Dave figured he was probably going to see if he could find anything to fix the door with, but he wasn’t about to stick around to find out. If Bro wasn’t going to press what had really happened he wasn’t going to linger round to push his luck. Instead, he quietly made his way back to his room, shutting himself in before immediately heading over to his closet and opening it slowly.  


Both Terezi and Gamzee crashed to the floor in a heap, Aradia slowly floating out above them. Terezi angrily pushed the larger troll off of her, crawling to her hands and knees before standing up and glaring at Dave.  


“That was entirely unnecessary,” she told him, but Dave just shook his head, looking back towards his door, trying to make sure Bro wasn’t coming to check on his for some ungodly reason. There would be no real reason actually, the only reason would be to make his life even more of a living hell than it already was.  


“It was necessary to the max, you don’t even realize,” he told her, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. Gamzee had managed to stand up now as well, and looked a little less blissfully out of it than he had beforehand.  


“Is your Bro still out there? What are we supposed to do while he’s here?” Terezi asked, and Dave really wasn’t sure about that. He would like it if they just stayed quiet and unnoticeable in his closet and didn’t touch or do anything, but it seemed like he might have been pushing his luck by just having them in there for as long as he had, which had barely been a good five minutes. He was so freaking screwed.  


“You just have to stay in here man, I’m not about to let Bro see you. We’re all kinds of lucky he isn’t pushing the door thing, so we just gotta lay low for a while, like hiding a pet or some shit, simple,” Dave told them, trying to convince himself that it would really be that easy.  


“But that’s boring! What are we supposed to do, you only have one computer, and I’m not about to get shoved back in the closet,” Terezi complained. Dave slammed his hand over her mouth, trying to get her to quiet down. Bro was like a fucking watch dog he could hear that shit. Or at least he was pretty sure he could, he had no idea how Bro always knew what he did but the thing was you couldn’t keep shit from Bro so this probably wasn’t going to go over very well.  


“You will hide in the fucking closet if you need to, got it? Bro will definitely kick you all out if he finds you so then you can say goodbye to your nice place to stay, have fun getting to an island in the middle of the goddamn ocean,” he told her, and Terezi huffed slightly but thankfully didn’t fight back.  


“Fine, fine, but give us a little more warning next time,” she said back, her tone slightly more hushed now. Dave walked over to his door, listening for the sounds of anyone coming towards the room, but the chances of him actually hearing Bro was only if Bro wanted to be heard so what was even the point? Even still, he was desperately trying to figure out what to do at this.  


Should he just have the trolls stay in the closet for a while and go out there to see how the door thing was going? Did Bro suspect anything? Probably of fucking course, but how much did he suspect and how on the money was he? The guy probably wasn’t including aliens in his guesses, so at least if he did find out there was something Dave could surprise him with.  


“Perhaps when your bother leaves again we can find another area of the house that is larger to hide in,” Aradia suggested, and Dave nodded, although it took him a little while to figure out what that could be.  


“Yeah, we can set you all up in the attic or something, Bro really doesn’t go in there anymore, or at least I don’t think he does. Hasn’t left a smuppet trap for me from there for a good while now, so it should be fair game,” he decided. Of course, he had no idea when Bro was going to leave again, he would probably be home for the rest of the night, so they would just have to make do in his room.  


After a good half hour Dave had the three trolls go back into his closet so he could head out and see how Bro had managed with the door situation, as well as grab a few things for them to eat. Bro was sitting on the futon when Dave entered the living room, and it looked like the door was fit carefully back together with masking tape for the time being. Bro would probably get a new one in a couple of days, since this was something other apartment goers could actually see and complain about.  


Dave didn’t say anything as he passed through to grab a couple of bags of chips and water bottles, and Bro didn’t press him for anything either, thankfully. He hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath until he let it out in a sigh as he closed his bedroom door behind him. Just thank the lord they hadn’t broken this one.  


The rest of the night seemed to go relatively smoothly, all things considered. Bro hadn’t bothered them at all, and he only had to get the trolls to be quieter a couple of times. Dave really hadn’t managed to sleep all that much, since he was certain that at any moment Bro would burst into the room and find the three aliens sprawled out on his floor in miscellaneous piles of wires and ripped smuppets.  


For some reason though, that never happened, and Dave certainly had to count his blessings for that. All of those fucking blessing man, all of those one single blessing, it was a fucking miracle fair up in here.  


When he woke up the next morning he didn’t remember falling asleep, but he guessed that the exhaustion and paranoia had managed to get the better of him while his guard was down. The trolls seemed to have stayed up just as long as he had, or possibly even later, and were still asleep. He carefully crept over them, shutting the door as he made his way out of the room, hoping that maybe Bro had left earlier in the morning and they would have the house for themselves for a while and Dave could work on getting them set up in the attic.  


As luck would have it, there was no sign of Bro anywhere as he went through the apartment, although he still wanted to wait a while before making that call for certain. There was always the chance that he was up on the roof or hiding to scare the crap out of him after all.  


When he went up to the roof to look however, Bro wasn’t there, thankfully. Dave sighed in relief, figuring that the chances that he was home alone were actually pretty good at this point, and he might be able to fucking breath. 

Going back downstairs, he went to the door in the celling that led to the attic, pulling it down so that he could get a look inside. It was pretty dusty and full of old broken shit and musty smuppets, but the light bulb was still working and he could probably drag up some blankets and junk for the trolls to sleep on if he needed to.  


Satisfied with his finding, he headed back down the ladder and into the kitchen, searching around until he eventually found something that resembled cereal to eat. He didn’t bother with any milk, just taking the box and eating handfuls of it as he went back to his room.  


The three trolls were still asleep, so he decided to take that moment to go on his computer. It seemed like there would be much less time for him to actually use the thing with these three arguing over it. Even Gamzee at one point had wanted to talk on the chat client, mostly to that Karkat guy. Dave wasn’t all that sure why the dude seemed so popular, but according the Aradia he was their de facto leader, so he guessed that made sense.  


About half an hour later Aradia was the first one to wake up, coming over and eating a handful of cereal out of the box when he offered her some. She was definitely the most chill of the trolls, and had gotten really excited when she found his dead things collection last night. Apparently she had seen some sort of dream hologram of it in another universe or whatever, but when they started getting into that kind of stuff was when things stopped making sense for Dave and he tended to check out of the conversation.  


“You should try to get in contact with John, I’m sure he must be dealing with his own guests by now,” she told him, and he nodded, although before he was able to he started getting messages on his phone from Rose. Terezi had also woken up while he was talking to her; apparently she had gained her own guests this morning.  


Dave had to cut off the conversation suddenly when he started hearing people heading up the apartment stairs, probably coming to fix the door from last night. He quickly shuffled the trolls into the kitchen and up the ladder into the attic before anyone had come inside, having to wake up Gamzee to get him to go as well. Thankfully the dude didn’t seem all that bothered and just followed with the others still half asleep.  


He had just shut the ceiling door when his Bro swung the taped together door open, the one side cracking and falling off as he did. As Dave had thought, there was another person with him, looking like they came right out of a Home Depot with a new door next to them.  


Dave nodded at the two, grabbing a bottle of juice before heading back into his room. Hopefully the trolls would just stay quiet up there until it was safe for Dave to grab them again, because he couldn’t stay out there guarding the entrance or else it would get suspicious as fuck.  


When he got back to his room, he started up Pesterchum, deciding to see if he could try to message that John kid again. He had immediately blocked them the other day, but maybe now he would be willing to listen to reason and accept the fact that aliens were real, they were here, and they had juggalos.  


turntechGodhead started pestering ectoBiologist at 10:12am  
TG: yo you unblock me yet  
TG: oh shit looks like you did the message went through  
EB: hey, is this dave?  
TG: you fucking know it man  
TG: hear you got some freaky grey people kicking it around your house too  
EB: oh yeah, it’s all the rage now man.  
EB: also hi, rose told me about you.  
TG: oh man she did  
TG: whatever she said dont listen to her it aint true  
TG: unless she was going on about how awesome i am  
TG: you dont get any realer than that  
EB: heh, she didn’t really say much, just that knowing you is ‘an experience’  
TG: yeah that sounds like more of her cagey bullshit  
TG: anyway hows the troll watch  
TG: i hear yours got some freaky powers or whatever  
TG: lucky  
TG: i just got a girl who likes to bite people and lick everything and a juggalo who is prone to breaking down doors  
TG: and aradia shes pretty cool i guess  
EB: a juggalo? that’s certainly different.  
EB: but yeah, one of them has these cool beam powers.  
EB: and i think one can talk to animals?  
TG: pretty sweet  
EB: yeah, but um, i’m still pretty lost on what we’re actually supposed to be doing about all of this.  
EB: they keep talking about another universe or life or something that we’re supposed to remember where we knew them.  
TG: oh yeah i really don’t know jack about any of that either  
TG: im mostly just going  
TG: well shit theyre aliens  
TG: guess i should listen to what they have to say  
EB: yeah that makes sense I guess.  
EB: karkat says we all need to meet up, but that’s pretty much impossible with how far away we all live from each other.  
EB: and I have no idea how long I’m going to be able to hide them either.  
TG: yeah man having the same problem over here  
TG: bros gonna find out i just know it  
TG: that dude fucking knows everything hes gotta see somethings up  
TG: i told him telemarketers broke down our door  
EB: don’t telemarketers call you on the phone?  
TG: and so you see the problem with that cover up  
EB: yeah…  
TG: anyway theyre hiding in the attic right now and i cant be hovering around there or he’ll get suspicious  
EB: at least that seems like a pretty good spot to hide them.  
EB: i had to have them go out on the roof last night when my dad came in to check on me.  
TG: yeah basically this is probably not a lasting solution for any of us hiding these guys  
TG: except for rose  
TG: her mom would just be like  
TG: yes my daughter has friends im gonna buy them a drink  
EB: would she really?  
TG: i don’t know probably  
EB: oh i need to go, vriska is getting annoyed about being stuck outside  
TG: alright have fun dealing with your aliens  
TG: hope your dad doesnt find them  
EB: yeah, same to you.  
EB: later.  
ectoBiologist ceased pestering turntechGodhead.  


Dave sighed as he pulled away from his computer. He seemed like a nice guy, hopefully he would have better luck keeping his trolls hidden than Dave has had so far. Not that he thinks he completely fucked up, but he was definitely not off to a very good start, that’s for sure.  


Listening, he could hear people working on the front door, and decided that he would try to head back out once it seemed like they were done. After maybe another twenty minutes of waiting and praying to a god which was apparently the trolls locked in his attic that nothing would happen and they wouldn’t suddenly fall through the ceiling, Dave was pretty sure they were done fixing the door and decided to head out to check, making a scene of throwing away his juice bottle as an excuse.  


Bro was sitting on the couch when Dave passed him, flipping through the channels with as much care as if he hadn’t just had to replace a door without knowing why. When Dave got to the kitchen, he tried to listen in to see if he could hear any of the trolls moving around up in the attic, and to his genuine relief and complete surprise, he couldn’t. For fucks sake it’d been nearly a half hour, he thought by now they would have busted through the ceiling, but he guessed that maybe they had some restraint? Or they have fallen asleep or something like that.  


About an hour or so later he heard the TV in the living room turn off and the new door squeaking slightly as Bro left the house. Dave waited approximately five minutes before heading back into the kitchen and climbing up the ladder to see if the trolls had managed to kill each other and Aradia was the sole survivor, explaining why it had been so quiet.  


What he found was actually his earlier guess and they had managed to fall back to sleep on uncomfortable looking piles of trash and broken Christmas decorations.  


“Yo, Bro left if any of you care,” Dave decided to say anyway, to see if they would respond at all. Terezi lazily waved a hand at him, not moving as she replied.  


“No we don’t, let us sleep Dave it’s the middle of the day,” Dave raised an eyebrow at this.  


“What are you all nocturnal or something?” he asked, and could just barely see Terezi nod her head.  


“Yes you numb nut,” she responded. Dave blinked, letting that information sink in. That might actually make things a lot easier if they were all sleeping throughout most of the day. It certainly made it less difficult to hide them for a good twelve hours, and Bro was just as likely to be gone at night as any other time, so it wasn’t like he had to worry about that any more than any other time.  


“Well alright then,” he said, slowly climbing back down and shutting the door above him. Not sure what else to do for the trolls at the moment, he decided to head to his room. It was nice knowing that he could relax for at least a couple of hours and not have to worry about them trying to bust out of the attic just in time for Bro to come back.  


When he got back to his room he ended up talking to Rose again, letting her know that the trolls were nocturnal and also that he got a new front door. She seemed a little confused about how Bro had not pressed the issue more, but he told her that’s just how they roll. Although really he had no fucking clue, Bro probably just figured he’d find out sooner or later. Which he probably would, but Dave was desperately hoping that it would be later. At least give them some time to figure out what they were going to do with the trolls first.  


Rose had to go after a while though, since apparently her trolls were not taking nice pleasant naps and needed tending to. Honestly, the one troll she had sounded like a total douchebag. Dave wasn’t all that sure if he was worse than what he had to deal with though. Sure, Gamzee hadn’t really done anything besides break the door yet, but Dave just had this uneasy feeling that he was not somebody he wanted around.  


The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, Bro stopping home with KFC for dinner before disappearing off somewhere, most likely the roof if Dave had to make a guess. Waiting to make sure he wasn’t going to pop right back up, Dave went and sneaked up to the attic. This time he found that Gamzee was awake; having slunk back to the far end of the attic doing something Dave couldn’t see. The boy cleared his throat to get his attention, holding up a plastic bag full of miscellaneous types of chips and snacks and drinks for them to eat, as well as a couple of board games he’d found stashed in the back of his closet behind his photography stuff.  


“Hey, found you guys some food and stuff to do while up here, I’ll come back to get you guys out if Bro leaves again tonight,” Dave told him, leaving the bag by the edge of the entrance. Gamzee nodded at him, his eyes half lidded as he wondered over, having to hunch slightly so he wouldn’t hit his head on the ceiling.  


“Motherfuckin thanks my brother,” he said, and Dave just nodded, already starting back down. He didn’t know when Bro would show up out of the blue and he didn’t want to risk it by staying up here any longer than he needed to.  


“Not a problem, just make sure you all stay quiet and we’ll be fucking golden,” he told him, and Gamzee just nodded, already starting to look through the bag of goodies as Dave shut the attic entrance.  


Bro didn’t leave again that might, and so Dave just had to struggle in silence hoping that the trolls wouldn’t get into a heated argument over the Guess Who he’d given them and alert Bro to their presence. Every couple of hours Dave would sneak a look out of his doorway into the living room, but he didn’t dare attempt to actually walk through the apartment to check on them. He’d always gone by the assumption that Bro was never truly asleep, just lying in wait and he was not about to risk that shit.  


Eventually he must have passed out to the point that the next time he woke up the sun was rising and Bro must have finally fucking left. Sure it was his own house but Dave really would have appreciated it if he’d gone a little sooner.  


Climbing up to the attic, all three trolls were awake when he opened the door.  


“Dave! Finally, we’ve been sooo bored!” Terezi exclaimed, and Dave simply rolled his eyes, sitting down by the entrance.  


“Sorry TZ but couldn’t chance it with Bro down there. Even if he’s in his room that doesn’t mean he’s not aware of everything happening around this place,” he explained, taking in the state of the attic. Not as bad as he imagined it would be actually, a bunch of the trash from the food was mostly still in the bag, and the other junk that had been left in here over the years seemed to have conglomerated into three vague piles.  


“Are you guys sleeping on that shit?” he asked, pretty sure he saw spikes of old Halloween skeletons that had snapped and actual broken swords in the mix.  


“Well yeah, what are we supposed to sleep on without recuperacoons?” Terezi answered. More freaking alien words, but he was gonna go from context clues and guess she meant a fucking bed like a normal person.  


“Dude, I can get you guys some blankets and pillows and shit,” he said, although really he had no idea where he would get this stuff, but he could get it. Run out to Bed Bath and Beyond or some shit, be a real generous host, that sort of thing.  


“That would be much too soft, I don’t know how you humans manage sleeping on those things alone,” Aradia told him, and Dave decided not to even fucking ask. Aliens, he told himself, apparently they liked sleeping on shit that could possibly skewer you in your sleep. The more you know.  


“Alright whatever, well, if you want to get something to eat or on the computer, now’s your chance,” Dave told them, starting back to the kitchen below. Aradia quickly floated down after him, Terezi and then Gamzee following afterwards.  


Okay, he had to admit, this was going much better than he expected. He’d been sure that the second Bro came home he would have been all over this shit and uncovered them instantly, but it’d already been two nights and he hadn’t seemed to notice a thing. Well, except the door, but he didn’t even seem all that concerned about that. Maybe he figured Dave had just managed to do it while being a dumbass and was going to let him off the hook? Or more likely ambush him when he least expected it and waste him in a strife. Either way though, he definitely didn’t seem to be thinking any sorts of aliens or intruders were involved.  


Dave decided to count his blessings at that. Wow, two whole blessings, would you just look at them? Two. It was like fucking Christmas up in this joint with all these blessings, or thanksgiving or some shit. This was going down in the record books for sure.  


Hopefully he could make it through another day, maybe he could make it up to three.  


\---  


Rose ended up hearing from Dave again after a little while, and he had apparently been completely serious about hording the trolls up in his attic. According to him though, it was as close to the perfect plan as they could get when ‘you lived in a small as fuck apartment what do you want me to do Rose just let ‘em introduce themselves to the guy like it’s no big thing.’ Truthfully she supposed he was actually right on this one, and while she did not personally know Bro Strider she did not think that would go over all that well.  


Feferi was talking animatedly to Rose at the moment, having noticed the book on horror terrors she owned. According to the bubbly girl, she had been raised by one, which was certainly a bit of a surprise. Infinite horrors didn’t really seem to go with her image all that well.  


“I still think that we should be tryin’ to at least jog these human’s memories a little. I mean at least she was interestin’ when she had all her fraudulent magics,” Eridan butted in. Rose just had to raise an eyebrow at that now. It seemed as if everything these trolls said was just barely touching on some much larger story, and while she was trying her best to keep a level head about this and look at it all with scrutiny, it was certainly difficult to try to figure out where to start unraveling the whole thing.  


“Fraudulent magics?” Rose asked, figuring that would most likely be enough to get him to go off on an explanation. Seeing him nod as he started to speak, it seemed it very well would be.  


“Yeah, your dumb fake dark magics with your wands and shit,” Rose found herself rather disappointed with this explanation, as it didn’t actually explain jack shit.  


“Eridan is talking about what you used to fight with in the game, your specibus was needlekind and so you were able to do magic after alchemizing a few more advanced wands,” Kanaya explained much better, although still with several points that Rose could only speculate on at the moment.  


“Oh, I see. Tell me, do you actually think it is possible for any of us to remember this pre-existing universe you all claim to have come from?” Rose asked.  


“Well if we are going to be technical we are actually from two universes removed from the one we are currently in, as we had created the universe you had been in to scratch, but you all had managed to permeate our session in such a way that we seem to have come along for the rise, so to speak,” Kanaya said, before thinking a moment and adding “as for if you will be able to remember, I really can’t say. It was said that scratched versions of oneself would not have any inkling of any previous iterations, but you have proven many things about this game wrong before so I would not put it past you to do it again,” she finished.  


“Alright, I’ll chalk that one up to the maybe column for now,” Rose decided. “How is your friend doing?” she asked, leaning over to try to see what was on the computer screen. Kanaya sighed slightly before speaking.  


“He is certainly worked up about all this, although that seems to be all I can say,” she said.  


“Poor Crabkat needs to learn how to clam down a bit,” Feferi added, frowning slightly. Rose had to stop for a second to translate what the girl had meant to say through the pun. She had noticed quite a few puns as she had spoken earlier; it was certainly something to get used to.  


“Let me talk to him already Kan, you’ve been on that blasted husktop long enough,” Eridan demanded. Kanaya did not make any move to give him the computer though, simply turning back to the screen to continuing typing her response to whatever Karkat must have said.  


“He says he does not wish to speak to you at the moment,” Kanaya said, and Eridan frowned, looking like he was outright pouting as he crossed his arms and glared at nothing in particular.  


“Aw come on now how am I even supposed to apologized about all of that if he doesn’t even wanna talk about it? I mean you guys have forgivin me so he should be able to since that’s what really matters right?” he said. Kanaya simply rolled her eyes, not even looking over at him as she replied.  


“Neither of us ever said we forgave you, Eridan,” she said coldly. Rose found it hard not to crack a small smile at the way the fish alien slumped at that answer. Sure, she wasn’t exactly sure what it was he had done previously to earn such treatment, but it Dave’s mention of a ‘murderous rampage’ was anywhere close to being the truth then there was a high chance that he most likely deserved it.  


“Well whatever, it’s not like I asked for your forgiveness to begin with. This is exactly what I get for trying to be the nice guy for once,” he muttered to himself, pushing off of the bookcase he’d been leaning against. “If you ladies will excuse me, I’m going to go find some company who will actually appreciate me,” he added as he headed towards the door.  


“There is no one around for miles, and you are not allowed to leave the house,” Rose told him before he managed to completely leave. None of them bothered going after him, Rose feeling that it wasn’t very likely that he would actually, and even if he did he most likely was not going to go very far. From how much he’d been complaining about having to wander through the forest she did not think he would willingly choose to go back to that over a simple slight.  


“Goodness, he is soooo melodramatic sometimes,” Feferi said, sounding rather annoyed at the boy’s exit.  


“I do not know how you put up with him for so long,” Kanaya added, before turning to Rose, “I am sorry for his behavior Rose,” she told her. Rose just nodded, not really too upset with him, it was more entertaining than anything.  


“It’s quite all right, nothing for you to worry about,” she said. “Now, I would like to know a little bit more about this scratch you all keep mentioning, if you wouldn’t mind explaining,” Rose decided to try being a bit more forefront with her desire for information. Kanaya nodded, frowning slightly as she typed a few lines into the chat client before pushing the computer off of her lap slightly to give Rose her full attention.  


“Ah yes, although I must admit I do not know the exact details of your specific scratch, I can tell you about what one is and what it is supposed to do,” she started.  


“Thank you, even that would be very helpful,” Rose told her.  


“Well, it is supposed to reset the game in which you are playing, but as this game is fundamental to the universe itself it manages to basically reset the whole thing to allow you a better chance of winning next time,” Kanaya started.  


“Does that mean we will have to play this mysterious game I’ve heard so much about again?” Rose asked, starting to get rather intrigued with the whole thing. If they were supposed to play this game again and the scratch had attempted to make them better prepared for it, in however way that was, she wondered what had changed from their alleged first play through.  


“There’s the thing that I do not know, since we were trying to make it so that we would not have to go through all of that again. Trust me when I say it isn’t the most fun experience,” Kanaya told her, sounding run down just by the thought of it. Rose added figuring out more about what exactly this game put you through on her list of things to dig deeper into later.  


“But there isn’t any way to find out if we managed to achieve that, is there?” she asked.  


“Well, it doesn’t seem like any of you have been affected by the game in ways that should have made themselves apparent by now, so that is a good sign,” Kanaya said.  


“And what ways are those?”  


“Oh shell, there are lots of things,” Feferi added in, a finger under her chin as she seemed to think. “You could have woken up on Prospit or Derse or you could have had strife specibus or things to help you prepare like building skills or first guardians or any number of other things,” she listed.  


“Well, you are right that we must have not gotten in contact with any of those, as pretty much none of that made any sense to me,” Rose admitted. Feferi smiled at her, laughing slightly at the response.  


“That’s probably a pretty good thing then,” she conceded.  


“So, was there anything else the scratch was supposed to do, besides get us out of this mysterious game?” Rose asked, trying to get as much out about this topic before she moved on to the next one, even if she wasn’t even sure what that next one would be. Just from the list of strange terms Feferi had rattled off she could go in a million different directions it seemed.  


“Well that was the main objection; we were hoping it might reset a few deaths as well. It was also supposed to reset our universe as well for us to live in, although that doesn’t seem to have gone as well,” Kanaya said. Rose nodded, about to start asking for more details on this game when a muffled shriek came from downstairs.  


“Oh dear do you think your mother has come home?” Kanaya asked, looking rather worried, and Rose was sure her face was rather similar. Sure, it would probably be easy enough to tell her mother it was all some sort of costume club or play or something for school they were working on, even if it involved getting the woman a little more drunk than usual to accomplish said task. Before either her or Kanaya were able to start heading downstairs Feferi sighed loudly, slowly standing up from where she’d been resting on the bed.  


“That was Eridan, it’s probably fine,” she said, already starting out the door to check what had happened to the boy. Rose quickly noticed Kanaya already snickering behind her hand as she started down after her, and the human girl was finding it rather infectious.  


The smile that had made its way onto her face instantly fell when she entered the kitchen and saw the large flame that had managed to take over most of the stove, however.  


“Eridan what did you do!?” Feferi screamed, the boy standing several feet away from the fire, seemingly frozen in shock. He jolted at the sound of her voice though, quickly spinning around, a look of pure befuddlement on his face.  


“I don’t fuckin know the thing just lit up all by itself! I was just tryin to heat up some of that noodle junk with the shrimp in it!” he blabbered. Rose groaned, pushing past them to turn the sink on, filling up the first pot she could get her hands on to try to put this all out.  


“Do you not have microwaves on your planet?” she grumbled, dumping the pot of water over the flaming carcass of ramen noodles, filling it up once again to douse the last lingering flames. It only took three pots of water to get it all out, but there were still large scorch marks on the stove, as well as licks of smoke and ash on the above cabinets and ceiling the now soaked hunk of charred noodles and foam cup seemingly melted to the stove as well.  


“Uh…” Eridan muttered out, taking a few steps back from the mess. Rose slowly put the pot back into the sink, turning towards him and glaring daggers.  


“You are cleaning this up,” she demanded, not leaving any room for argument in her voice. She could hear Feferi snickering behind them, but ignored it for now.  


“Alright fine, fine, no need to start shouting, just uh, got something I could use to clean this with?” Eridan said, actually complying a lot better than Rose had thought he would. She made her way over the one of the bottom cabinets, pulling out a sponge and some heavy duty cleaner, handing the items without a word, which he took with a huff before turning towards the mess of the stove top.  


Rose turned toward the other two girls as Eridan muttered to himself as he scraped away at the stove. It really didn’t sound like he was doing all that good of a job, but it was better than nothing. She could go back and try to fix it up before her mother got home.  


“I’m just going to make it a general rule not to have any cooking unless I am in here, alright?” Rose told them. Even though she was pretty sure these two would be more careful, she didn’t want to take any more chances.  


They weren’t quite able to get the markings off of the stove or the ceiling though, and Rose just prayed that her mother wouldn’t take too much notice of them once she came home.  


When Rose heard her mother return home, she called out her voice did not sound as slurred as usual. She must have forgotten to take refills with her to work this morning. Well, there went the hope of her not noticing the residual mess left in the kitchen.  


“Rosie dear, I brought home din-dins!” the woman called from down stairs. Rose sighed, handing the computer she had been using to speak to Dave over to Kanaya, quickly telling them all to stay in her room and be quiet before heading downstairs. If she didn’t her mother would just come up to give her whatever fast food monstrosity she had picked out, and that was pretty much the last thing Rose wanted to deal with at the moment, especially while her mother seemed relatively more sober than usual.  


“Hey Rosie dearie, do you know what happened to the stove?” her mother asked when she came into the kitchen. The woman was staring at the black char smeared into the stovetop, a look of confusion on her face. Rose simply rooted through the Wendy’s bag as she answered, pulling out her meal.  


“Top Ramen accident, I will help you with any additional cleaning that it might need,” she said, knowing her mother wouldn’t actually press her for anything more than that. The woman instantly started shaking her head, starting towards the living room to probably call someone or get some inane object she thought would help fix the residue mess. Or just to get a spare martini she had left in the room.  


“Oh no, no it’s all good honey, mamma’s got it,” she told her. Rose didn’t quite feel like pressing this line of passive aggressiveness at the moment considering what she had to take care of upstairs, so instead she simply nodded, grabbing her bag of food as she started heading back towards her room.  


“Alright, I’ll leave you to it then,” she said, not waiting around to hear whatever the woman’s answer was. She made sure to lock her door before heading over to her desk.  


“As long as you all stay in here until she leaves again there shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Rose told them, starting to eat the chicken sandwich her mother had brought her. She offered the trolls her fries, having gained a bit more confidence in the idea that they could eat most human food by this point. Feferi had started yawning a bit, remarking on how she couldn’t believe they had managed to stay up all day.  


“Is that not something that you species usually do?” Rose asked. Feferi shook her head, rubbing her eyes slightly as she did.  


“Nope, unless you’re Kanaya of course,” she said. The other girl then started to explain how the light was naturally invigorating to her, and Rose got a bit more of an explanation to that haphazard throw away mention of her being a vampire from Dave. Feferi ended up falling asleep rather soon after that, on a pile of clothes and knitting supplies Rose had pushed into a corner of her room a few days prior. When she had offered to get them blankets or something else to sleep on she had denied her offer.  


Eridan seemed like he was attempting to stay up as well, but eventually ended up curled up in her closet on a pile of old notebooks and school work that had been shoved away over the years.  


“I must say, this is all certainly not how I expected my weekend to go,” Rose remarked to Kanaya. The glowing girl was still awake, but it seemed like she was starting to get rather tired too, but seeing as she seemed to be on a more human normal sleeping schedule than the other two, it still made sense as it was starting to get a bit late.  


“Yes I understand without the memories of the game all of this must have come at quite a surprise. It wasn’t until the game began that you started believing us last time and those are pretty extreme circumstances,” Kanaya answered her.  


“If something had gone wrong and we do end up having to play this game again, what would that mean exactly?” Rose asked. She still had not gotten a proper rundown of this game that was apparently the cause of all of this. It didn’t even sound like a game to her, more like a fight for survival.  


“Your planet would be destroyed once again, and hopefully you and the others would be able to win this time in order to create a new universe to escape to,” Kanaya told her plainly. Well, that certainly wasn’t quite what Rose had imagined. They had mentioned universe creation before, but not that the whole point was so you would have somewhere to go after your planets destruction.  


“What exactly do you mean by my planet being destroyed?” Rose decided to ask, wanting as much clarification on something that sounded like potentially a rather big deal.  


“Oh, every planet that the game appears on is destroyed via meteor, it happened to ours as well,” Rose nodded, starting to hope that they had managed to do whatever it was they had been planning in this previous life correctly so that this scenario would not end up coming to fruition.  


“It really does not seem like the game has had much an effect on your universe though so while I wouldn’t rule anything out I think we are going to be okay for now,” Kanaya told her. Rose nodded, not entirely convinced, but she shouldn’t really be convinced about what she had said about the world potentially ending either.  


“Well, that certainly is a relief,” Rose decided, not wanting her to think that she was actually worried about the world ending. Kanaya was right, it seemed like there would be more warnings, something to set them off on the idea that something like this was actually possible. If they were lucky, hopefully the only mishap had been the relocation of the trolls.  


Kanaya ended up falling asleep about fifteen minutes later, and Rose turned off the lights to allow herself to get some rest as well. She could hear her mother still awake, moving around downstairs, and it sounded like she had turned that infernal vacuum on again. Rose hoped that she would head out again tomorrow, although there was really no telling with that woman. Her work schedule seemed to be based entirely on how she felt. That’s probably exactly how it was, actually.  


When she woke up the next morning, Eridan was already awake, sitting up in her closet and muttering to himself as he read one of the books that had been on her shelf. She couldn’t quite tell which one it was from this distance, but it looked like he was already a good way through the novel.  


“How long have you been awake?” she asked, stretching her arms over her head as she pushed herself out of the bed. Kanaya was lying on the floor next to it, curled up around her computer and the charging wires. It didn’t look like she was causing any damage though, so Rose decided it would be best to just leave her be.  


“I don’t know a couple of hours. Now would you pipe down I’m tryin to read over here,” he snapped, not looking up from the book once. Rose simply shrugged, leaning over to grab her phone to see if anyone else had woke up yet. The chances were slim due to their respective time zones, but it didn’t hurt to see.  


“Hey witch, are there more o’ these books here?” Eridan asked suddenly as Rose scrolled through her chum list. It was much longer now than it had been before, and it actually appeared that a few of the trolls were awake at the moment as well. Rose looked up at him, trying to get a look at what he was reading.  


“Which one is that, exactly?” she decided it would be better to just ask instead of wasting time trying to narrow down her mental list.  


“It’s ‘bout this wizard boy, Harry Potter,” he explained, and Rose couldn’t help but smirk slightly. He was definitely a strange one, and Rose remembered him saying something about ‘fraudulent magics’ earlier.  


“Oh yes, there are seven of them, to be exact, they should be on the shelf as well if you wish to read them later,” she told him, deciding that if this kept him quiet and out of any trouble, she would gladly lend him as many of her Harry Potter books as she could  


“Seven? Well that should be enough to lessen my boredom in this god awful human world for at least a few nights,” he said, seeming to return his full attention to the book once he had finished. Rose silently agreed, deciding she would have to dig up some of her other magic based books to keep him quiet once he finished the series. Or maybe she should show him the movies, that would probably keep him entertained for a while as well.  


A little while later Feferi woke up, almost instantly as bubbly as she’d been the day before. It didn’t seem that mornings dampened her personality at all, that was for sure. It was actually what woke Kanaya up as well, the last troll pushing herself up off of the computer wires drowsily; asking what all of the ruckus was about.  


Once they were all awake Rose decided it would be best for her to check downstairs to see if her mother was still home. Just because she couldn’t hear the woman moving about didn’t mean she wasn’t just passed out on the couch like usual after a long night of cleaning and drinking.  


Heading downstairs, she found exactly that, her mother’s clothes rumpled as she lay on the couch and an empty martini glass tipped over on the floor. Rose stayed as quiet as she could as she made her way into the kitchen, grabbing a few things to bring up for the trolls to eat. They would have to stay hidden away today, as it didn’t seem like her mother was going to be heading out and about any time soon.  


Rose found herself thinking that this was all going better than she thought it would. She couldn’t really speak for the others, but it didn’t seem like it would end up being that difficult for her to hide the trolls for the most part, as long as they were relatively corporative.  


Hopefully she would be able to think of a plan on how to deal with finding a permanent place for the trolls, it wasn’t like they could just hide with their respective kids the rest of their lives. It didn’t seem like it would be too hard of a problem to solve, apparently in another life she had managed to think of a plan to get them all out of a reset universe relatively unscathed.  


This should be easy.  


\---  


When Jade awoke the nest morning, she found that it was much later in the day than she expected. However, once the events of the previous night rushed back to her, she decided that she deserved those extra hours.  


The three trolls were asleep as she looked down at the floor around her. They had seemed to make a few heaps of her stuff to sleep on like that Nepeta girl had mentioned the night before. She and the large fellow, Equius, were curled up together on a mess of her dolls and a few guns, which she quickly noted was most likely not the safest thing to sleep on, and decided once they woke up she would check to make sure they were all empty if they wanted to keep sleeping on them for whatever inane reasoning.  


Karkat was sleeping on a jumble of the blankets and pillows she had brought, which seemed a lot more comfortable than the other twos makeshift bed. When she looked closer though, she saw that there were several books and electronics stuffed in with the bedding, as well as the laptop she had lent him.  


Stretching as she pulled herself out of bed, she tried to be as quiet as she could as she left the room. They had been very irritating and had disrupted her sleep last night, but she realized that they had not meant to do that, at least originally, and there wasn’t much use in payback by waking them up as well. She also had no idea when they had managed to get to sleep, and it would be cruel of her to wake them if it had only been a little while ago, which was her hunch.  


Making her way downstairs, her grandpa was already awake when she passed by the foyer, cleaning out one of his guns.  


“Good morning my girl!” he said cheerfully, going through the motions with his weapon without even looking down at it, the routine so ingrained in him at this point in his life. Jade smiled at her grandpa, trying to push any thoughts of the three aliens up in her room out of her mind for the time being. She didn’t really think he would have a problem with them, but she wanted to ease the older man into it, and only after she had managed to find out as much as she could on her own.  


“Morning grandpa, any plans for today?” she asked, silently hoping that it would be a day where she was free to do as she pleased. She loved doing expeditions and such with the man, truly, but right now she had slightly more pressing issues to attend to.  


“I’m afraid not my dear, gotta give those dandy ol’ frogs some time to adjust before taking any samples,” he told her, and Jade nodded in understanding. That was true, although she wasn’t entirely sure where this project with the frogs was going completely. Sometimes she wasn’t sure her grandpa knew either, although she didn’t say as much. The man was super smart after all, but sometimes it seemed he wasn’t all there. John said it was probably just because he was getting older.

“That’s okay grandpa,” she told him, leaving the room in order to grab another of the extra computers they had littered around the house to bring up to her room. She vaguely wondered if she should grab one more, but decided that three would be enough for now. If it ended up being a problem she could find it then.  


Saying goodbye to her grandfather she started back up to her room, stopping by the atrium first in order to grab some things to eat for breakfast. She wondered if the trolls liked fruit. They had really sharp teeth, so they might prefer meat. The only real supply of meat she had though were the steaks she kept for Bec, and she decided to grab a few as well just in case.  


Returning to her room, the three trolls were still asleep, so she quietly made her way back over to the bed, opening the computer she had grabbed and downloading the Pesterchum app. It looked like she had never gotten it on this specific device, but that was a quick enough fix.  


John was online, thankfully, and she quickly sent him a message. Throughout the next couple of hours the trolls had woken up, and she had ended up talking to more people than she would have thought she could in a single day. Even still, it didn’t feel like they had actually managed to get much done. It was painfully obvious that normal modes of travel weren’t going to work, and even if they did manage to find a way there would still be issues with their parents and figuring out then what. Several of the trolls voiced wanting to return to their universe, but most of them agreed that would probably not be a viable option.  


Jade made her way out of the room to check on her grandpa and Bec a few times throughout the day in order to not raise suspicion. When she returned after going down to say goodnight, Karkat was frowning at her.  


“Is there any way to use that devil beast of yours to get us out of here? Does it even still have its first guardian properties?” the troll asked, and Jade shrugged as she walked to sit on her bed.  


“I don’t really know what you mean by first guardian, but do you mean his teleportation thing? I don’t think it can go any farther than the island,” she told him truthfully. She didn’t really know where the dog had come from, always believing it was one of grandpas most successful experiments come to fruition. Karkat groaned and flopped back on the bed next to her.  


“Are you fucking serious? Of course it can go farther than the island that fucking hell hound can literally teleport to anywhere on the god damn planet,” he barked at her. Jade raised an eyebrow at that claim, not entirely sure where he would have gotten that idea from. Of course, the trolls seemed to have a lot of ideas on things they should rightfully know nothing about.  


“Why would he be able to do that?” she asked, and Karkat sat up as he glared at her.  


“Why the fuck would he be able to teleport in the first place? He’s a fucking first guardian, the fucking caretaker of your whole damn planet it can go wherever its shit infested mind pleases. The fact that it has a barkbeast brain and likes to stay on an island with a couple of people who feed it hoofbeast flesh is just the way it is,” he told her.  


“Are you serious?” Jade wasn’t quite sure if she could believe that, but it would probably explain a lot of stuff she’d never really bothered to question about Bec.  


“Yes, I am fucking serious Jade. Now figure out a way to get that devil hound to transportalize us all into a single meeting place, we have people being left without proper supervision who should under no circumstances be without proper fucking supervision,” he demanded. Jade huffed, although she had to admit he had a point. From some of the stories that she had heard, it didn’t sound like all of the trolls were either safe or fully there mentally.  


“I’m not sure how to get him to do that though, Bec doesn’t really listen when I tell him to do stuff like that, grandpa would have to,” she explained.  


“Then why not get your human lusus to get him to take us all?” Nepeta jutted in.  


“Exactly! See, even Nepeta can see the easy as fuck solution to all of this,” Karkat agreed, and Jade sighed as she tried to answer.  


“Well yeah, but even then we don’t know for sure if he’ll do it. How is he even supposed to know where the others are? He’s just a dog after all,” she tried to reason.  


“Pretty sure that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bloody well try,” Karkat fought back, “Jesus fuck it’s like talking to Jadesprite, when did you get so defeatist Jade?” he asked, which only caused her to quirk an eyebrow at the strange response.  


“Okay, we can try, but maybe tomorrow, Grandpa already went to sleep. And who’s Jadesprite?” she asked, and Karkat shrugged, not appearing too concerned with her question.  


“Eh, an alternate version of you that did nothing but cry and you pretty much hated her, it’s not all that important,” he told her flippantly, although really the whole thing just made her even more confused. She’d been trying to get the full story of this weird previous universe they kept talking about, but every time she thought she understood they would toss in a line like that which would completely throw her off her baring’s once again.  


“An alternate version of me? What?” she asked, and Karkat huffed slightly before continuing to explain, but compared to other little tantrums he would throw he went into it without much fuss.  


“There were these things called dreamselves that you would wake up as in the game. Yours died and then spent a fuck ton amount of time dead and when you managed to bring her back to life as a sprite she was a hopeless crybaby and it pissed you off a lot. Then she ran off and presumably died during the scratch again like everything else,” he clarified.

“Um, okay then, I guess that makes sense,” Jade relented, although she didn’t really see a version of herself acting that way, she wasn’t going to argue with him over that. There would probably be many other things she could argue about with him over in the future to take care of any need she had for that.  


“Pardon my interruption,” Equius started, drawing their attentions over to him where he was sitting at one of the computers Jade had brought up. He wasn’t using it though, instead using Nepeta as an intermediate for him, since he’d already managed to break one keyboard almost beyond repair. “but if I am understanding the plan correctly, we are using the bark beast to transverse to the others?” he asked, and Jade nodded, shrugging slightly.  


“I mean we’ll see if it’ll work, but don’t get your hopes up, I don’t know how we’ll get him to know exactly where to take us,” she said.  


“Fuck, if he can just get us like, slightly close to where they are, we can fucking figure the rest out from there, don’t you think?” Karkat said, and Jade nodded.  


“Yeah, I guess that can work too,” she conceded. Karkat yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth as he did so. It was one of those things that kind of reminded Jade that these weren’t humans, the jagged lines of sharp teeth in his mouth.  


“Fuck I’m tired, how the hell do you humans manage to stay up the whole day?” he asked, and Jade shrugged, noticing that the other two were starting to show signs of wariness as well.  


“We sleep during the night that’s how,” she told him, and Karkat just groaned, standing up and flopping over into the pile of books and blankets he had rounded up the night before.  


“Whatever, it’s fucking unnatural is what it is. There is no god damn way that all of that sun is good for you, it’s practically impossible to be a viable option at this point, unless you’re a species made completely of fucking rainbow drinkers or some muscle beast shit like that,” he complained, his voice muffled by a textbook. “You don’t even have recupracoons this shit is fucking unreal,” he muttered as an afterthought.  


“You can try the bed if you want?” she offered, but Karkat vehemently shook his head against that option.  


“Fuck no, that shit looks way too soft and flat and uncomfortable,” he told her, and Jade just rolled her eyes.  


“Those are the things that make it comfortable genius,” she replied.  


“Yeah, maybe for your weird ass human body, it doesn’t work that way for trolls, we’re built of tougher stuff then you Jade, we need more structure,” he told her in a slightly condescending tone which she pointedly chose to ignore for the sake of civility. 

“Whatever dummy, just get some sleep already, we’ll talk to grandpa in the morning,” she told him, and the troll just nodded, not making any move to push her on the subject and actually doing what she told him to do for once.  


She was slightly nervous about talking to grandpa about this, but she was sure it would work out alright. He must be slightly confused about the whole alien deal at first, but he would most likely come around soon enough. After all, he’d dealt with some pretty weird things in his day, so aliens showing up probably won’t end up being too big of a stretch for the older man. They just had to figure out how to tell him in the least upsetting way.  


She would figure it out in the morning, but it was going to work. They just had to get Bec to bring the others here, and then they could figure the rest out.

They could do this.  


\---  


John was not sure how this was going to end up being a lasting thing, not in the slightest. Within the first two days of the trolls staying at his house, he swear he’d nearly had a heart attack four or five times, and it seemed like the trolls had to spend more time than they would have liked sitting up on his roof when his Dad was around. 

John had even gone up with them a few times, which was pretty awesome because Sollux used those sweet beams to levitate him up, but even with how awesome that was it didn’t change the fact that all of this was starting to wear on him a little. The couldn’t even make a sweet set up there to make thing easier, since the roof wasn’t flat and they risked items falling off if they put anything down.

His dad really didn’t seem any wiser however, and Vriska kept insisting that he needed to lighten up more. Sollux just insisted that he was going to stay out of it, and Tavros didn’t say much of anything on the subject. John wasn’t sure what it was but it didn’t seem like he liked him very much for some reason, but he decided to just ignore that for now

Still, it was his third day with the trolls staying at his house, and his dad was at work for the time being, so they were not stuck in his room or on the roof. Instead the four were in his kitchen, making something for the trolls to eat. John was worried that his dad was going to start noticing that the food was going much faster than usual, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that, he had to feed them after all.  


“John, I do not know what your deal is with the cakes, they are absolutely great,” Vriska told him, and he nodded, rolling his eyes slightly as he answered. He’d long ago given up on not letting them eat the cakes in an attempt to keep his dad from getting suspicious.  


“I know, you’ve told me this several times already,” he said, and Vriska just assured him it was because he must have something wrong with his taste receptacles if he thought this was something bad. Once again, he had to explain that he didn’t think it was bad, per say, just that he was tired of it since he had it all the time.  


It was really strange, but despite how crazy this whole situation was, a lot of it didn’t really feel that way. He was hiding aliens from his dad who had crazy powers and talked about these universe creating games and past lives and all of this stuff, but then they went and gouged themselves on his dad’s cakes and made shitty puns.  


“Never thought I’d say this but I’m with VS on this, you have no idea how good this shit is like god damn,” Sollux added, and John just huffed, crossing his arms and shaking his head.  


“Nope, believe me you can really get sick of it after a while,” he insisted, not that any of them really listened to him. John kind of wanted to tell them to stop eating the cake so much, or else they would probably get sick, but he didn’t really have the heart to since they really seemed to be enjoying it so much.  


“Oh yeah, KK wants to talk to you again,” Sollux told him without looking up from his food. That perked John up slightly. He liked talking to Karkat so far, even if he did yell a lot and stuff. If anything, he was trying to get things figured out with all of this, and that was something John felt they really needed, because he did not know how much longer he could hide them before his dad started to get suspicious. He wanted to, since they were actually pretty fun and he liked them, but he just felt like they needed something more solid than just hide them and see what happens.  


And as much as he liked these three, none of them seemed that concerned with figuring this out. Sollux occasionally complained about having to be around ‘these two fucking lunatics out of the twelve of them’ but that was about it. Hell, it seemed almost like Vriska wanted to stay more than anything.  


“He does? I’ll go see what he wants then. My dad won’t be back until five so you guys can stay down here for a while longer if you want,” he said, pushing himself off of the stool he’d been sitting on and starting up to his room.  


Heading over to his computer, he quickly logged out of the last Pesterchum account that had been in before logging onto his own. A few seconds later he sent Karkat a message.  


ectoBiologist started pestering carcinoGenetisit at 3:41pm  
EB: hey karkat.  
EB: sollux said you wanted to talk to me?  
CG: YES, WE HAVE A LOT WE NEED TO WORK ON AND THE MORE I CAN TRY TO GET SHIT CONSISTANT WITH EVERYONE THE BETTER.  
EB: oh okay, so what’s up?  
CG: WE’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT HOW TO GET ALL OF US TOGETHER.  
CG: SINCE YOU ALL SEEM SO ADAMANT THAT YOUR NORMAL HUMAN TRAVEL MEATHODS ARE NOT GOING TO CUT IT.  
EB: well yeah, we’ve been over this already.  
EB: what, do you guys have any new ideas?  
CG: ACTUALLY YES WE DO.  
CG: IT HAS TO DO WITH JADE’S FUCKING DEVIL BEAST OF A FIRST GUARDIAN.  
EB: jade’s guardian?  
EB: do you mean her grandpa?  
CG: NO NOT HER FUCKING HUMAN LUSUS JOHN, IT’S NOT THAT KIND OF GUARDIAN.  
EB: oh, what do you mean then?  
EB: sorry dude but you kind of lose me sometimes when you go off with the alien words like this.  
CG: YEAH NO SHIT.  
CG: I MEAN HER GOD DAMN BARKBEAST.  
EB: wait what are you gonna do with bec?  
CG: THAT THING CAN FUCKING TELEPORT ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE.  
CG: HOW DO NONE OF YOU KNOW THIS SHIT?  
EB: it can?  
EB: well that fixes our problem pretty easily then, we can just use her dog to teleport us all to meet up and figure out what to do then, right?  
EB: wait how in the world can it do that?  
EB: i mean that seems like a pretty big thing and not something a normal dog should be able to do.  
CG: IT’S NOT A NORMAL ANIMAL THAT’S GOD DAMN HOW, BUT I DEGRESS, YOU DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.  
CG: JUST ANOTHER SIDE EFFECT OF THE GAME FOR ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW.  
CG: BUT YES, THAT WAS WHAT I WAS THINKING.  
CG: THERE MIGHT BE A SLIGHT PROBLEM WITH THAT THOUGH.  
CG: THE LAST TIME WE WERE ALL STUCK IN THE SAME PLACE, IT DIDN’T REALLY  
CG: IT DIDN’T TURN OUT THAT WELL.  
EB: what do you mean?  
CG: I WASN’T ABLE TO KEEP EVERYTHING TOGETHER, AND SOME OF US DIED.  
CG: I’M SURE YOU’VE ALREADY HEARD BITS AND PIECES OF IT.  
EB: oh yeah i have.  
EB: but that’s not going to happen again, right?  
EB: i mean i never really got what killed you all though.  
EB: wasn’t there was a big monster after you?  
CG: YES, WE HAD TO DEAL WITH JACK.  
CG: BUT HE ACTUALLY WASN’T THE ONE TO KILL ANY OF US.  
CG: WE KIND OF TOOK CARE OF THAT OURSELVES.  
EB: whoa, you mean you killed each other?  
CG: LIKE I SAID, THINGS GOT OUT OF HAND.  
EB: so you don’t think we should actually get together because you might all go crazy and try to kill each other again.  
CG: I DON’T THINK IT WILL COME TO THAT.  
CG: BUT I JUST WANT TO HEAD ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION.  
CG: I DON’T THINK I COULD TAKE WATCHING MY FRIENDS DIE AGAIN.  
EB: yeah no dude that sounds horrible.  
EB: so what are we supposed to do?  
EB: because we really can’t hide you guys forever, and even if the teleport thing works we can’t have another murder spree happen.  
CG: I THINK HARLEY’S ISLAND WOULD BE THE SAFEST PLACE FOR US, SINCE IT’S BIG ENOUGH THAT WE WONT BE CONFINED LIKE ON THE METEOR.  
CG: HOPEFULLY THAT SHOULD STARVE OFF ANY MURDER HAPPY FREAKS UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT A MORE PERMANENT SOLUTION.  
CG: I WAS ALSO THINKING THAT MAYBE  
CG: YOU COULD HELP ME KEEP EVERYONE UNDER CONTROL?  
CG: YOU KIND OF HAVE A BETTER TRACK RECORD AS LEADER WHEN IT COMES TO KEEPING PEOPLE FROM KILLING EACH OTHER THAN ME.  
EB: oh yeah sure thing dude, i’ll help if you want.  
EB: i still don’t really get the whole leader thing but i’ll definitely try to keep people from murdering each other.  
CG: OKAY THEN, GREAT.  
EB: sweet, now we just get bec to teleport everyone and we should be okay right?  
CG: WELL JADE IS NERVOUS ABOUT ASKING HER GRANDPA TO GET THE BEAST TO DO IT, BUT ONCE WE DO EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FUCKING DANDY.  
EB: that’s great then!  
CG: YEAH, AS LONG AS THE OLD MAN DOESN’T FREAK THE FUCK OUT.  
EB: heheh, that’s true.  
EB: jeeze, it’d be really bad if the dude had a heart attack or something.  
CG: RIGHT.  
EB: so uh…  
EB: was that all you wanted to tell me?  
CG: I GUESS.  
EB: oh, okay then.  
EB: um…  
CG: BLISTERING EXPLOSIVE FUCK JOHN, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE THIS SHIT SO AWKWARD?  
EB: hehe, was that something i did in the past universe too?  
CG: YES, AND IT WAS JUST AS AWFUL THEN AS IT IS NOW.  
EB: oh, sorry about that.  
EB: i guess i’m just not good at goodbyes.  
CG: YEAH NO SHIT, YOU ARE THE FUCKING WORST.  
EB: hey, what was our bye like before we reset the universe?  
EB: i mean, did we even get to say goodbye?  
EB: i’d feel bad if we thought we weren’t ever going to be able to speak again and i wasn’t able to say bye to you.  
CG: HORN CHAFFING FUCK, YOU ARE DOING THIS TO ME ON PURPOSE AREN’T YOU, YOU GOD DAMN SHIT STAIN.  
EB: doing what on purpose?  
CG: FUCKING NOTHING.  
CG: THE GOODBYE WAS NOTHING SPECIAL. JUST A NORMAL FUCKING, WELL SEE YOU NEVER.  
CG: WE BOTH HAD BIGGER FUCKING THINGS TO DEAL WITH AT THE MOMENT THAN ANY HEARTFELT CONFESSIONS.  
EB: alright, alright, don’t get all bent up about it.  
EB: so you’re going to talk to jade’s grandpa in the morning and figure out how to get you all to her house?  
CG: YES HOLY FUCK WE JUST WENT OVER THIS.  
EB: well good luck then, i hope it works.  
CG: YEAH, ME TOO.  
EB: um, i think i need to get tend to Vriska and the others now.  
EB: dad’ll be home soon, and i don’t want him to find them in the kitchen.  
CG: OH GOD NO  
CG: FOR FUCK’S SAKE JOHN DO NOT SCREW THIS UP MERE HOURS BEFORE WE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE A HANDLE ON THE SITUATION.  
EB: okay, i won’t don’t worry.  
EB: talk to you later dude!  
CG: YEAH, LATER.  
ectoBiologist ceased pestering carcinoGenetisit  


John pushed himself away from the computer before heading out of his room and down the stairs. He could hear the three talking in the kitchen as he got closer. Or well, he could hear Vriska talking as he got closer, at the least. It didn’t seem like Sollux was really all that friendly with either of them, and was mostly finding time to talk to the other trolls over the computer if he had the chance.  


Tavros mostly just listened to the girl, although he tended to look rather irritated with her at times, often making little quips here and there that she ignored for the most part. John got the suspicion that there was something going on there that he didn’t know about, and thinking about what Karkat had said happened to them before, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.  


“Hey, so I was just talking to Karkat,” John told them as he entered the room. The three had eaten the cake that John had left out for them, as well as the sandwiches he’d made, because it probably wasn’t healthy for cake to be the main part of their diet while they were here.  


“Yes John, that is what you left to do,” Vriska told him, rolling her eyes slightly. She was nice and all, but sometimes she could be a little bit condescending.

“Oh well yeah, I know that, but I wanted to tell you all what he was saying,” John explained. Sollux didn’t even look up from where he was picking apart the last remains of his sandwich as he spoke.  


“You mean the thing about using that devil bark beast to get us all on the island?” he said, and John nodded.  


“Right, he told you about it already?” he asked, and Sollux nodded.  


“Of fucking course he did, that’s the reason he said he wanted to talk to you, remember?” the multicolored eyed boy told him.  


“Um, what is this about Jade’s barkbeast?” Tavros asked, and John turned his attention to him to explain, since the chances of Sollux actually elaborating on this issue was slim to none.  


“Since Jade’s dog can apparently teleport we’re gonna use him to get you all to her island, since that seems like the safest place at the moment. I guess we’re going to try to figure out what to do with you guys and how to get you situated to life on earth after that,” he told him, and Sollux nodded. Before the troll could say whether or not he approved of his plan Vriska was huffing, groaning as she leaned dramatically over the back of her chair.  


“So we’re going to be stuck on that boring old island? That doesn’t sound like much fun,” she started to complain, and John wondered if he was right about her not wanting to leave.  


“Yeah, but you’ll be with all of your friends again, and you won’t have to hide like you do here,” John attempted to convince her. Once again, it wasn’t like he didn’t like hanging out, but it would just be safer for everyone, and maybe they could keep using Bec to transport them back and forth so that John could visit. Plus, he promised Karkat he would help with the whole keeping everyone from killing each other thing, so he probably had to be there to actually do that.  


“That actually sounds like, um, a good idea to me,” Tavros added, which John was slightly thankful for. It wasn’t like Vriska really listened to him, but it was kind of nice to have backup.  


“Whatever, it still sounds totally boring to me, so of course Tavros would like it!” she fought back. It was a little hard to not get frustrated with her sometimes, but other times she was really cool, so John supposed it balanced out.  


“Well, why don’t you just give it a shot, plus I already told you all you can’t stay here forever, my dad will find out,” Vriska let the front chair legs fall back to the ground with a bang as she groaned.  


“Fiiiiiiiine, but if it ends up being lame I’m blaming it on you John,” she told him, and he simply smiled and nodded, just glad that she agreed to go along with them once they got Bec to do as they wanted.  


“That’s perfectly alright with me, now you guys should start finishing up your food my dad will probably be home soon and we need to clean this up,” he told them, and the three agreed to help with varying degrees of reluctance.  


It didn’t take too long before they managed to tidy up the kitchen and head back into John’s room. Thankfully, this would be the last night he’d have to feel guilty about having the trolls sleep on the roof for fear his dad would come in and see them.  


If everything went well, tomorrow they’d be at Jade’s island, and they’d all be one step closer to figuring out a permanent solution for all of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is where things really start to kick off, I promise. Of course the next chapter might take a little longer to get out, as I've pretty much run through most of my NaNoWriMo build up.  
> As always through, thanks for reading and please let me know what you think.


	5. Chapter 4- Searches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. I've pretty much run out of backlog so with such long chapters it takes a little while when school and work and stuff gets in the way. This chapter is slightly longer than the last ones if that helps.

He knew quite aware of the fact that there was something going on in his house. The only issue with this was that he was not sure if he should bring it up with his granddaughter quite yet. After all, only fools rush into things without thinking them all the way through, but then he supposed he’d been a fool for most of his life.

He’d tried to change that when little Jade came into the picture, but well, old habits die hard my friend, as they say. In fact, he wasn’t sure that they had managed to die at all. Maybe he was just too old to be taught new tricks, or maybe he wasn’t so certain that changing was the right thing to do. There was more than just the thrill of the hunt keeping him sucked in, as positively alluring as it was.

If he was being completely rational, he would have stopped all of this tomfoolery years ago. Moved Jade to a nice house in the suburbs on the mainland, maybe near the John fellow she talked to so much, and let her have a decent normal life like any little girl deserved. It would have been as smashing as any other adventure he’d had in his long life, if not with less chance of encountering dangerous fauna. 

There was something in his old gut that told him that was not how things were supposed to go though. Something that screamed absolutely not whenever he considered the option. So he kept them on their island, holding up with the most rip snorting experiments and trying to ignore the downright unpleasant feelings that would crop up whenever he thought about certain things too hard.

If Jade happened to be around, he’d cover up any uneasiness with a hearty laugh. And when she wasn’t, the old man would sigh, scratching the dog at his side and trying to keep himself from focusing on anything but the future. That was the most important thing after all, they still had a chance to change that. The past was the past, and as far as he could tell, it had been set in stone.

He could be wrong about that, but he was never one to understand all of that time what not. 

These were not things that he could bother spending time focusing on at the moment though, no siree, there was something a foot! His instincts told him that he should search the place from top to bottom until he found the foul intruders and teach them what not. There was something holding him back from that plan of attack however.

It was the same something that had held him to this island and held him to Jade and Bec and to bustling about giving what for to any ruffians that he came across.

Whatever that thing was, that strange feeling in his gut, it was going on now. Things were supposed to happen this way, and by gum if he wasn’t going to keep away from that nonsense. He’d never been too on top on all of the causes and loops of the behind the scenes actions, he liked to be out front, in the center of all the action. Maybe he should have paid more attention to all of that, but there simply never seemed to be time.

It was early in the morning, Jade and the rest of whatever she was allowing in their home were still asleep. He didn’t want to leave his girl alone if he wasn’t sure quite how well he could trust these fellows, or just alone at all for that matter. There didn’t seem to be much of a choice at the moment though. He trusted Jade to be able to take care of herself though, and even more so to come to him if she was ever in anything she felt that she couldn’t handle on her own. It’d been a while now and she hadn’t made a single issue about their guests, so he was starting to come down on his suspicions. 

The old man patted the dog by his side’s head. Dear boy nuzzled its snout into his hand, not making a sound as he looked blankly up at him. At least, he assumed that’s what Bec did, hard to tell when the old boy didn’t quite have any eyes to see with. Grandpa, he’d been called that so much for the past decade and a half he’d started to refer to himself that way, chuckled as he started towards the door leading out of his large home.

“Stay here ol’ boy, I need to you look after Jade for me, all righty?” he told the dog. The animal stood still for a moment, before zapping in a flash to be lying in front of the fireplace a few feet away. Lazy thing couldn’t walk the small distance.

Shutting the door behind him, he started down the field towards the shore line in the distance. They had a small boat tied up to a makeshift dock, for when they wanted to go out and do studies on some of the sea life nearby, or simple fishing. 

The trek down wasn’t too long, and the air was cooler than it usually was on the island, as the sun was still just barely rising over the horizon. The old man sighed as he shifted the large gun slung over his shoulder. One must never under any circumstances be caught off guard, after all. 

He had never encountered anything of actual danger on the island, but one could never be too certain of their surroundings. 

The waves were lapping away at the old boat as he drew near, rocking it ever so slightly. The sea was clear this morning, picturesque even with the sun slowly sliding into view. He couldn’t help the smile that graced his face as he got the boat ready to set sail. Once it was done, he stepped into the old thing, untying the rope holding it onto the tiny wooden pier and turning on the engine before starting away.

He went at a slow pace, not in any particular hurry to get much of anywhere. He’d been ordered to head out here, but he was in no rush to see what awaited him. Thinking about it made the smile drop from his face. The only thing he was completely certain of was that this was not going to be pleasant.

For a few moments, he contemplated turning the old boat around and heading back to his island and his granddaughter and his relative safety, but that wasn’t where the adventure was. Jade would be fine on her own. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to fend her herself after all, and he believed in her. 

She wasn’t even completely alone at all. By Jove, if that was the case he would turn around in a heartbeat, adventure be damned. But no, she had Bec old boy with her, not to mention their new guests. He supposed he did trust them enough if he was leaving Jade in their hands. There were also those other three children, if she was ever in too tough of a jam (although he knew that would have to be a mighty fine jam to trouble his girl). Without a doubt, she could always count on them.

Those four worked well together, and with the help of these new comers, he had a feeling they were going to make out quite fine and dandy. 

An old geezer like him would just cause more problems in the long run than help, in any case.

He slowed the boat as he checked his position, noticing that he was coming up on the spot, a seemingly random point in the ocean, but the coordinates were correct none the less. A huff of breath left him as he finally came to a stop, waiting patiently in the open sea. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and his boat barely rocked in the clear water so far out from his island. 

Checking his watch, he saw that it was almost time for whatever was to happen. He tried not to think too much about what was awaiting him, choosing instead to hope for the best. 

He’d never paid much attention to all the going-ons behind the scenes of the adventures that had strung along his life. He’d been told before that he should have, warned that things were coming and this wasn’t all just some game he could reset if something went wrong. 

They were on their final try, any second chance was gone and they had to make the most of what they’d been given. He would always wave away those concerns, insisting that he most certainly was making the best of what he had. Even looking back now, he wouldn’t have changed a single thing.

When it came to the future, the only thing he could do was hope.

If there was anything he was good at in his long life, it was hoping for the best.

The hand on this watch struck 6:12am, and he took a large breath.

\---

Jade shot out of bed at the sound of a large explosion rocking outside of her house. Running towards her window to see if she could get a look at what was happening; her first thought was that the volcano had finally blown. As she ran she saw that the three trolls had all sprung up at well, in varying degrees of confusion and battle readiness. 

Scanning the view, relief flooded her when she saw that the large mountaintop was as still as ever, no plumes of smoke or rivers of lava running down its sides like she’d expected. Looking further, Jade caught sight of some large billows of smoke coming from some explosion, about a mile off from the island in the sea.

She felt her heart drop down into her stomach, unsure of the horror that was filling her for some reason. That explosion could have been anything logically, but something in her gut told her that something was wrong, wrong, oh so wrong right now.

“Grandpa!” she called, starting towards her door in a panic. The trolls seemed to have calmed down somewhat, figuring that there wasn’t anything immediately life threatening. Jade didn’t pay them any mind however as she tried to figure out what was going on.

“Jade, hey, calm down for a second,” Karkat tried, reaching out to grab her shoulder. She quickly shoved past him, not looking back as she left the room and ran down to the front foyer. 

“Grandpa!” she yelled again, eyes darting around for any sign of the old man. She wasn’t even sure why she was so desperate to find him, maybe she figured that he might know what had happened. There wasn’t anyone in the front room though, just Bec lying down by the fireplace. The old dog lifted his head up when she rushed in, but didn’t make any other movements.

Jade started looking through the house, calling out for her grandpa as she diligently went through each room. The longer the search turned up empty the more panicked she could feel herself becoming. She was not about to let herself think what her gut was telling her may have happened, instead intensifying her search. 

After a while the trolls had crept out of her room, and reluctantly she allowed for them to help her look. She was planning to tell Grandpa about them today anyway, so keeping them hidden didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Once they finished looking through the house from top to bottom the four headed outside, Jade refusing to stop until they found him. They had even attempted to get Bec to help out. Jade had hoped the dog would either take them to him or vice versa, but the old thing barely lifted its head before slumping back down again. 

That didn’t sit well in her gut. Bec was lazy sometimes yeah, but if she asked him to do something enough, especially if it had something to do with grandpa, he would at least attempt to help her. 

They had considered splitting up for a while, and although they had done so in the house they decided not to outside. If one of the trolls did find him, there was a chance that he might assume they were what made that large explosion and attack them, which was definitely not what they needed after all this. 

It was nearly noon by now and they had pretty much searched the entirety of the island. Jade had been specifically avoiding the area of beach closest to where the explosion had taken place. She kept telling herself it was because they didn’t know if whatever had caused it was still out there. It was a lie she wasn’t going to admit, but they had exhausted all other options at this point. 

Karkat was being strangely quiet throughout all of this, especially as they got closer to the beach. In fact, all three of them were being abnormally quiet, none of the bickering or complaining she’d grown used to and Jade was just not appreciating it. It felt like it made this something important and bad and she didn’t want to feel that right now. She wanted to pretend things were normal, or at least what had become normal to her, but it was becoming more and more obvious that they weren’t. 

As the shore came into view, she could see the dock they usually had a small boat tied to come into view. She had considered sending the trolls out on that boat at first, when they’d been grating on her nerves. It was gone now though, just a single worn rope floating in the sea left.

Jade wanted to stop walking forward, to head back to her home and start looking for her grandpa there again. Maybe he had headed back while they were out looking for him? It felt like she didn’t have control of her feet anymore though. They continued to take her forward until she was standing on the sand, the sea lapping at her feet.

“Jade, we don’t know for sure if that was him,” Karkat told her quietly, much too quiet for him, taking a tentative step towards the girl. Jade was staring out towards the water, taking in the small pieces of rubble from the explosion that had definitely come from farther out in the water. 

Slowly, she sunk to her knees, unable to keep herself standing when she managed to identify grandpa’s hat floating closer to the shore. 

“Jade?” Nepeta asked carefully, although Jade ignored her, trying her best to keep the tears threatening to break through back.

He was gone. Oh god oh god he was gone. She was right she didn’t want to be right! What happened? How had this happened? Grandpa couldn’t die he was stronger than that he was invincible he was her grandpa he was supposed to take care of her what were they going to do now what was SHE going to do now this couldn’t be happening it couldn’t it couldn’t it couldn’t!

Jade pulled her arms around her as sobs started wracking her body, leaning forward into the sand as waves lightly lapped away at her knees, the sea completely calm despite the turmoil raging through the small girl.

It wasn’t fair.

\---

carcinoGeneticist  started pestering ectoBiologist at 12:09pm  
CG: JOHN.  
CG: JOHN YOU FUCKER ANSWER ME YOU SHIT SMEARING HUMAN SON OF A FUCK.  
CG: EGBERT I SWEAR TO THE MOST WRATHFUL FUCKING GOD IMAGINABLE THAT IF YOU DO NOT ANSWER ME THIS INSTANT I WILL UNLEASH UNSPEAKABLE THINGS UPON YOU.  
CG: AND THAT GOD IS ME, YOU BLITHERING PISS PIPE SO YOU BETTER FUCKING TAKE WARNING.  
CG: DAMN IT WE ARE HAVING A CRISIS OVER HERE.  
CG: FUCKING HELL WHERE ARE YOU I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.  
CG: SHE WON’T STOP CRYING WHAT DO I DO?  
CG: JOHN EGBERT THIS IS YOUR GENETICALLY PREDETERMINED MOIRAIL SISTER OR WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU MESSED UP HUMANS CALL IT I’M DEALING WITH.  
CG: YOU ARE ALL GODDAMN PALE HARLOTS SO I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO THINK OF THE WHOLE FAMILIAR THING YOU HAVE GOING ON TOO.  
CG: IT’S FUCKING SICK IS WHAT IT IS.  
CG: WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? I AM NOT EQUIPPED TO HANDLE THIS KIND OF THING.  
CG: YOU’RE THE FUCKING FRIENDLEADER JOHN, I’M THE SHITTY ACTUALLY GETS CRAP DONE LEADER THIS IS NOT MY JURISDICTION DO YOU UNDERSTAND?  
CG: JOHN.  
CG: JOHN.  
CG: JOHN.  
CG: JOHN.  
EB: holy shit karkat calm down.  
EB: I was in the bathroom for like two seconds how did you even managed to type all that so fast?  
EB: what’s going on?  
CG: OH THANK FUCK.  
CG: WE ARE HAVING A MAJOR FUCKING ISSUE OVER HERE.  
EB: why what happened?  
EB: who’s crying? what in the world are you talking about?  
CG: JADE.  
EB: what?  
EB: why is she crying? what did you guys do to her?  
CG: DON’T YOU GO BLAMING ME FOR THIS. WE DIDN’T DO A GOD DAMN THING!  
CG: HER HUMAN MAN LUSUS WENT AND GOT HIMSELF BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS IS WHAT HAPPENED.  
EB: wait, are you talking about her grandpa?  
EB: oh man that is so bad.  
EB: are you serious right now? is he okay? did he die?  
CG: YES I’M FUCKING SERIOUS, AND I JUST TOLD YOU.  
CG: HE FUCKING BLEW HIMSELF SKY HIGH.  
CG: THE DUDE WAS MAYBE A HUMAN MILE OUT INTO THE OCEAN AND WE MANAGED TO HEAR AND SEE THE EXPLOSION FROM JADE’S HIVE.  
EB: holy shit that is really bad.  
EB: so there’s no way he survived?  
CG: FUCK NO.  
EB: :(  
CG: LISTEN, I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I’M SUPPOSED TO DO, YOU ARE REALLY NOT HELPING ME HERE.  
EB: supposed to do about what?  
CG: ABOUT JADE.  
CG: YOU’RE HER HUMAN SIBLING MOIRAIL THING. HOW DO I GET HER TO STOP CRYING?  
EB: uh, jade and i aren’t siblings?  
CG: OH FOR FUCK SAKES.  
CG: ONE, YES YOU ARE, YOU ARE THE ONE THAT TOLD ME ABOUT THOSE PREVERSE HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS TO EXPLAIN THIS.  
CG: AND FUCKING TWO, THAT IS NOT WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW.  
EB: okay, okay, we’ll talk about that later.  
EB: but um, i’m not sure?  
EB: i guess just give her some time right now, since this is a really big thing that just happened.  
EB: and it’s totally okay and natural to cry over something like that.  
CG: BUT  
CG: FUCK.  
EB: where is she right now?  
CG: STILL BY THE WATER.  
CG: I HAD NEPETA RUN BACK AND GET THE HUBTOP SO I COULD CONTACT YOU.  
EB: oh okay.  
EB: yeah dude, you just need to give her some time to grieve.  
EB: you all just found this out?  
CG: LIKE TWENTY MINUTES AGO YEAH.  
EB: let her cry!  
EB: i mean, yeah try to comfort her if you can too though.  
CG: HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THAT THOUGH?  
CG: DO I SHOOSH HER?  
CG: I HAVE A FUCKING MOIRAIL JOHN.  
CG: OR AT LEAST I THINK I DO?  
CG: FUCK IT’S COMPLICATED OKAY?  
EB: um, what’s that?  
CG: THIS IS NOT THE FUCKING TIME TO TRY TO EDUCATE YOUR PAINFULLY PRIMITIVE THINK PAN ON THE FINER NUIANCES OF TROLL ROMANCE OKAY?  
EB: uh, wow, no don’t try to romance jade at a time like this dude!  
EB: god trolls are so weird.  
EB: just give her a hug or something!  
EB: if anything just tell her it’s from me.  
EB: because wow this is so shitty and i would definitely be giving her a hug if i was there right now.  
CG: FUCKING FINE, BUT I CAN’T PROMISE IT’LL WORK OUT ALL THAT WELL.  


John sighed as we waited for Karkat to go hug Jade on his behalf. Wow, this was definitely not what he’d expected to hear when he saw Karkat messaging him. He’d been expecting some news about the plan they’d talked about last night with Jade’s dog. 

He felt absolutely terrible. Jade’s grandpa sounded like such a cool guy, all about adventure and stuff, and she was really, really close to him. John sighed as he flopped his head down onto his desk. He had no idea what he was supposed to do even, he wasn’t good at this kind of super emotional sad comforting stuff. It was kind of funny that Karkat was coming to him for advice when he thought about it.

“Joooooooohn? What in paradox space is wrong with you?” Vriska asked, sitting on his bed, messing around with one of his old Gameboys. She had already managed to beat most of the games he had for that device, although Tavros had completely dominated the pokemon ones. 

“Jade’s grandpa just died,” he told her, not sure how to sugarcoat it. Vriska wasn’t someone you had to be gentle with though, so that helped a little. The troll girl frowned, putting the game down slightly as she put more of her actual attention onto him.

“That’s her lusus, right?” she asked, and John nodded. He was starting to get a hang of all the weird words the trolls used for simple things. Apparently, the closest things they had to parents were these weird monsters called lusus that raised them. Neither Vriska nor Sollux had talked about theirs much, but Tavros had told him a lot about the little butterfly winged bull that had been his dad. 

“Oh, well that sucks. She wasn’t close to it, was she?” she asked, actually seeming a little sympathetic, which was a first for John to see. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if Vriska could get sad, but then again maybe she could. He had heard that all of the trolls had lost their monster parents at some point, maybe even twice, so that had to have been upsetting for them.

“Yeah, she was. I just hate that I’m so far away and can’t do anything to help her,” he confessed, and Vriska shrugged at him.

“It’s not your fault, and hey, look on the bright side! At least we can’t blame this one on Tavros again, although I suppose sabotage isn’t completely out of the question. It never is,” she said, causing John to raise his eyebrow in confusion.

“Uh, what do you mean, ‘blame this one on Tavros again’ exactly?” he asked, ignoring the sabotage thing because that was just how Vriska was. The troll girl turned back to her game as she went about explaining it to him.

“Oh I don’t really know, he did something dumb last time and ended up killing her guardian while trying to protect her like a complete loser,” she said, and John couldn’t do anything but stare at her as the information set in.

“Wow,” he muttered, deciding he wasn’t going to push that one any further. He wasn’t all that sure he’d tell Jade about it either, didn’t really seem like the best thing to bring up at any time, let alone right after something like this.

Karkat had started messaging him back again, and John turned away from the troll girl to inspect how things were going.  


CG: OKAY, I GAVE HER THE FUCKING HUG.  
CG: I TOLD HER IT WAS FROM YOU. SHE SAID THANKS.  
EB: tell her it’s no problem, and that i’m really, really sorry about what happened.  
CG: SHE SAID IT’S FINE, AND NOT TO WORRY ABOUT HER.  
CG: SHE’S CRYING LESS NOW.  
CG: SO UH,  
CG: I GUESS IT WORKED?  
EB: see dude, just relax.  
EB: crying isn’t the end of the world.  
EB: didn’t you cry when your lusus dad died?  
CG: FUCK NO.  
CG: I HANDLED IT LIKE A GOD DAMN PROFESSIONAL.  
EB: oh, really?  
CG: WE ALSO JUST STUFFED HIS CORPSE INTO THE KERNALSPRITE AND HE CAME BACK FOR THE DURATION OF THE GAME.  
CG: AND AFTERWARDS I HAD TOO MUCH OTHER SHIT TO WORRY ABOUT.  
EB: uh wow.  
EB: yeah, i guess if the world was ending and you were making a new universe and everyone was killing each other you wouldn’t have much time to focus on grieving.  
CG: EXACTLY.  
CG: I MEAN, I DON’T EVEN THINK YOU CRIED WHEN YOUR MAN LUSUS DIED.  
EB: wait what?  
EB: my dad died in the last universe?  
EB: why didn’t you ever tell me that?  
CG: I JUST FUCKING DID.  
CG: ALSO I DIDN’T THINK IT WAS THAT IMPORTANT.  
CG: THAT’S A WHOLE OTHER LIFE YOU DON’T REMEMBER IN THE SLIGHTEST, AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL.  
CG: WHY WOULD IT MATTER IF AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF YOUR LUSUS DIED?  
CG: ESPECIALLY A DEATH WHERE, AS I JUST FUCKING SAID, YOU DIDN’T EVEN CRY WHEN IT HAPPENED.  
EB: yeah, i mean, i guess you’re right.  
EB: it just seems like kind of a big deal, i guess.  
EB: are you sure i didn’t cry at least a little bit?  
CG: I DON’T KNOW. YOU WERE BLACKED OUT WHEN IT HAPPENED, SO I GUESS IT’S A POSSIBILITY.  
CG: BUT LIKE YOU SAID, AS LEADERS WE WERE BOTH ENTRENCHED IN WAY TOO MUCH SHIT TO FOCUS ON ANYTHING LIKE THAT.  
CG: ALSO ROSE WAS DEAD TOO, SO YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN PREOCCUPIED WITH THAT.  
EB: wait rose also died?  
EB: :(  
CG: STOP WITH THE GOD DAMN FROWNY FACES.  
CG: YOU WERE ABLE TO BRING HER BACK TO LIFE A FEW MOMENTS LATER, IT WASN’T A BIG DEAL.  
EB: oh well that’s good.  
EB: but i wasn’t able to bring my dad back for some reason?  
CG: HE WASN’T A PLAYER, SO HE DIDN’T HAVE A DREAMSELF SO NO.  
CG: GUARDIANS DIE IN THE GAME, IT’S JUST A PART OF HOW IT GOES.  
CG: IT’S LIKE, THIS UNSPOKEN FUCKING RULE THAT EVERYTHING FROM YOUR LIFE BEFOREHAND GETS WIPED FUCKING CLEAN WHEN YOU ENTER THE GAME.  
CG: GUARDIANS INCLUDED.  
EB: wow that really sucks.  
EB: thank god we’re not playing it anymore; i really don’t want to go through that.  
EB: again, apparently.  
CG: FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH YOU HANDLED IT WELL.  
EB: thanks karkat.  
CG: OKAY, JADE WANTS TO SEE IF WE CAN LOOK THROUGH THE WRECKAGE TO TRY TO FIND OUT WHAT WENT WRONG.  
CG: SO WE’LL TALK LATER.  
EB: okay, good luck dude!  
EB: tell jade i hope she feels better.  
CG: ALRIGHT.  
carcinoGenetisist ceased pestering ectoBiologist.  


John stared at his computer for a few moments, unsure what he was supposed to do at this point. Should he tell everyone what happened? Jade might want a chance to do that herself, though. It was probably better if he didn’t chance it and let her decide what to do on her own. 

Instead, he read over the conversation he and Karkat just had a few times. It seemed like every time he talked to one of these trolls he found out something new, and this time was no different. If he was telling the truth, then that meant he and Jade were siblings, and his dad had died in the previous universe somehow. He didn’t think Karkat would lie either, maybe get some facts wrong by mistake, but he wouldn’t outright lie to him.

Thinking about it, it was probable that all of their parents died in this past universe, since Karkat said that was something that just ‘happened in the game’. Wow, this was a seriously depressing idea, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep on that train of thought. He didn’t want to leave the computer either though, in case Jade or Karkat ended up coming back and wanting to talk about what they had found in the debris. Or if Jade just wanted to talk in general, there was no way she wasn’t really shaken up by all of this. 

He wondered what this meant for the whole Bec teleport plan. Karkat had said that they needed to ask Jade’s grandpa about getting the dog to help them, but that didn’t seem like an option at this point. Jade had always said what a good dog Bec was, so hopefully he would listen to her without any trouble. It was still weird thinking that he had these powers, but the Trolls hadn’t seemed to have lied to them yet.

After maybe ten minutes neither Karkat or Jade had gotten back online, but he felt like the longer he waited, the more likely the chances were that the second he left they would come back. He didn’t even have anything else to do but wait anyway. He supposed he could see where Sollux and Tavros had gotten off too, but they were usually pretty good about not being seen, so he wasn’t worried. 

“Are you just going to sit there doing nothing?” Vriska asked him, jolting John out of the slight trance he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. “Jeeze, I mean yeah it’s bad when a lusus dies and all, especially if you’re close to it, but she’ll get over it eventually. Relax a little,” she told him, and John willed a smile onto his face as he turned to her.

“Yeah, I know, I think humans just grieve differently from Trolls,” he said, watching as she gave him a funny look before turning back towards her game.  
“Why are you grieving? What, did you know this guy or something?” she asked, and John shook his head.

“No, I mean, I’d heard a lot about him and he sounded really cool, but I guess I’m just more sad for Jade than anything,” he attempted to explain, not sure if Vriska would get it. It was hard to tell sometimes exactly how different trolls were from humans. She seemed to think over what he said for a moment before nodding.

“Alright, yeah that makes sense I guess, kinda went through the same thing myself,” she answered finally. Neither one said anything for several seconds, a slightly awkward silence falling over them.

Okay, he needed something to distract him from all this sadness, at least until Karkat or Jade came back. Or hell, if he could talk to Rose or Dave that would probably help, since he should at least warn them that something went wrong, even if he didn’t want to tell them exactly what without Jade’s permission. Neither of them were online right now though, so he’d have to find something else to occupy his time.

Thinking back to something really, really weird Karkat had mentioned earlier, he scrolled up the pesterlog to try to find the word he used.

“Hey Vriska?” he asked, squinting as he tried to figure out how what he wanted to say was pronounced. 

“What’s a, um, mwarale? Moirale?” he continued, sure he was butchering the pronunciation, but from the girl’s reaction he was pretty sure she understood what he meant. Her head had whipped towards him, eyes wider than he ever remembered seeing them. 

“A moirail? Who told you about those?” she asked, having seemed to completely forgotten both her game and the conversation they’d just had as she stared at him. John pointed at the screen as he answered.

“Karkat did, but he didn’t say anything about it other than it was like, a troll romance thing? I just told him not to put the moves on Jade while she was upset about her grandpa,” he explained.

“Holy shit, you mean to tell me Karkat brought up romance, you asked him about it, and he didn’t go off on an hour long rant?” Vriska asked, sounding incredulous. John nodded, not sure what the big deal was.

“Uh, yeah? What, is that not normal or something?” he asked. He knew that Karkat could talk a lot when you got him going, but was romance really something that just set him off? That was actually a pretty funny idea.

“Not at all, consider yourself lucky, you wouldn’t believe how unbelievably booooooooring he is,” she said.

“I don’t know, sounds pretty interesting to me. Do you guys have a different kind of romance from humans? One that apparently involves hitting on people when they’ve just had a loved one die?” he asked, and Vriska groaned as she rolled her eyes. He wasn’t sure how accurate of a picture he’d get from Vriska of all trolls, but if she was right then chances are he’d hear about this from Karkat sooner or later.

“I can’t believe I have to explain all of this. Well first of all, we have four kinds of romance, not just one like humans. One of them has to deal with like, emotional support is a part of it? Mainly you just help each other not do horrible things, like unnecessary murders and things like that, but I guess if one of you is a total pansy you would cheer them up and stuff. That’s the moirail thing Vantas was talking about,” she explained. 

Okay the whole romancing Jade thing was a lot less creepy now put into that perspective. John couldn’t help but think that it was really weird that they considered that a part of romance, but hey, aliens. What are you gonna do?

“Alright, that makes some sense I guess. But like, does that mean you can’t hug your friends or something if they’re upset? Like, your normal friends,” he asked, Vriska rolling her eyes at his question.

“You can still do that. I mean I’m not the self-proclaimed expert on this stuff, you’d have to talk to Vantas if you want a better explanation,” she answered. 

“Still a little strange, but if you say so I guess. Karkat said he has one? Like, a moirail, that is,” he said, noticing Vriska appearing surprised once again.

“He does? That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” she said. 

“Oh, well then that’s a thing I guess, he didn’t say who it was though. Do you have one?” he asked. Vriska pointedly turned back towards the game that had been forgotten in her hands. If John didn’t know any better he’d say she was embarrassed about all this. She wasn’t the type of person, or um, troll to get that way though, so it was probably something else. 

“No I do not, I don’t need someone like that telling me what to do. I am in fact perfectly fine on my own,” she declared. John raised an eyebrow in doubt, but decided it would probably not be the best idea to push it. 

“Okay then, what are the other kinds of romance? You said there are four, that kind of sounds like a lot,” he asked. Vriska seemed to relax realizing he was letting it go, and she started answering him without putting up any sort of fuss. 

“Well, there’s the one that’s most like how you think of romance, matespritship, or red romance, and then there’s kismesissitude, which is black romance and is like red but instead of loving the person you hate them. Then there's auspisticism, which is ashen and is used to keep your black romance from getting fucked up, or from getting into one in general,” she said quickly, not sounding like she cared all that much about if he was understanding or not. Also wow those were a lot of strange words. There was absolutely no way he wasn’t going to fuck them up later, that was for sure. 

“You have romance based on hate?” he blurted out, because okay that little fact was just glaring out at him. She hadn’t gone into much detail on any of them so that was just standing out like a sore thumb.

“Yes, you humans really don’t understand that, I know, but hate is a very important thing for us trolls. I mean, haven’t you ever met someone you just loved pissing off? It’s kind of like that,” she asked, and John had to shake his head. 

“No, I can’t say I have, actually. That sounds kind of weird and mean,” he told her, and Vriska huffed and she rolled her eyes at his answer.

“Well yeah for you, you don’t have it in you to hate anyone, honestly,” she said, and John just shrugged.

“I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. You trolls can have your weird hate romance all to yourselves. God that sounds so weird, I mean, what do you even do, go on a date and then punch each other?” he asked, Vriska groaning as she leaned back in his bed.

“I’m not getting into this with you anymore alright? Ask Karkat later if you want to know so badly,” she told him, and John just nodded.

“Okay, I’ll definitely do that,” he told her, turning back to his computer to see if anyone had gotten back online yet. To his surprise one of the chumhandles were lit up, but it wasn’t Karkat or Jade so his excitement died down a bit. He wasn’t entirely sure if excitement was the right word, but he pushed that thought out of his head as he clicked on Dave’s handle and began messaging him.  


ectoBiologist began pestering turntechGodhead at 12:51pm  
EB: dave!  
EB: i need to talk to you about something.  
TG: okay cool  
TG: is it about the god thing  
TG: i mean the dog thing  
TG: hell ya know what from the sound of it both of those fit so fuck it  
EB: um, well kind of i guess.  
EB: i can’t actually tell you the details yet.  
TG: why whats going on  
TG: did somebody lose a troll because that would be a really irresponsible thing to do  
TG: was it rose  
EB: um no?  
EB: no one’s lost anyone.  
EB: actually no that’s not true, but it’s not a troll.  
TG: shit did jade lose her magic dog  
TG: because that sounds like itd really fuck up the plan  
EB: no bec is still there.  
EB: look, i can’t tell you until i talk to jade and she lets me know if it’s okay.  
EB: since this might be something she’d want to tell people herself.  
TG: okay if that’s the case what is it you needed to talk to me about then  
EB: um, i guess i just wanted to warn you that something bad happened and jade is sad.  
EB: also this could mean that we won’t be able to do the teleport plan for a while, so you might be stuck with the trolls for a little bit longer.  
TG: that aint no problem  
TG: everythings going real smooth over here so yeah a few more days wont hurt  
EB: okay that’s good i guess.  
TG: right  
TG: nothing you need to worry about  
TG: everything is fine and completely under control  
EB: um, are you sure about that?  
EB: you’re acting kind of weird.  
TG: yeah dude never been more sure about anything  
TG: let jade know im sorry about whatever vague loss youve been hinting about  
EB: i’ll be sure to do that.  
TG: sweet  
TG: well i think the trolls lit something on fire  
TG: gotta go  
EB: uh okay, bye then.  
turntechGodhead ceased pestering ectoBiologist  


John sighed as he stared at the strange message. Dave was just really weird sometimes, but overall he liked him. Him and Rose both, he definitely didn’t expect to become such fast friends with them when they first met through mutual alien buddies. It was kind of nice though, since it was a lot easier to connect with them than it was with said aliens at some points. 

Like now, he wished he could just talk to them about what happened with Jade, but he had to run it by her first. He was sure they’d at least understand better than Vriska, at the bare minimum. 

He was sure he’d just have to wait a little bit longer for either Jade or Karkat to come back. He really hoped they came back soon. He didn’t know what had caused her grandpa to ‘blow himself sky high’ and he didn’t want something to happen to them too. Jade was his oldest friend and he wasn’t sure what he’d do if something happened to her.

He had to think positively though. It was probably a one off freak accident. They’d find out what happened, they could get all the trolls to a safe place, and maybe Jade could leave the island and come live with him or something. The idea of her having to take care of herself all alone on that island didn’t sit right with him. Even if she had the trolls, he just wanted to help somehow. 

At the moment though, there just wasn’t anything he could do but wait. 

\---

“Dave, I would just like to alert you to the fact that there is absolutely nothing you need to worry about, everything is fine and completely under control.” 

The blond looked up from his spot at the computer. He'd just been buying time until operation ‘magic fucking dog takes the trolls away to island paradise.’ Terezi was standing in his doorway, having just spoken that completely normal and in no way worrying sentence. 

“Okay, what the fuck did you guys do?” he asked, already feeling a headache about to come on from this. Honestly, he had no idea how he’d managed to keep everything running this smoothly for as long as he had, but whatever it was it seemed to be working. Bro didn’t look like he knew anything, and that was the biggest issue that had worried him when all of this started. Of course, when people came in saying things like that, his hope that this might work out tended to plummet.

Just a few more hours. Just a few more hours of this mess until he was finished with this otherworld hell experience. 

“Nothing, everything’s totally fine. Just relax, you smell tense coolkid,” Terezi insisted, doing absolutely nothing but getting him even more concerned about whatever it was they managed to fuck up. He stood up out of his chair, trying to think this through. Bro wasn’t home right now, so whatever they had done he might have enough time to fix it if they acted soon.

“Just spill it TZ so we can get this mess fixed asap. You’re supposed to be heading to Jade’s island today so we don’t have a lot of time here,” he told her, leaving the room to see if he could just spot it himself. From what he could see though, it didn’t seem like anything was immediately destroyed. There weren’t any noticeable holes in the walls or ceilings, nothing was on fire or ripped to shreds any more than they normally were.

“On the contrary, I believe we have more than enough time with you and Aradia around, don’t you think?” she joked. Dave didn’t bother answering her, if he did they would just get off topic and end up in some rambling conversation that wouldn’t get them anywhere. This had happened more than enough times for him to pick up the pattern. While it was cool when they didn’t have anything better to do, when something was obviously wrong and they were on a time restraint he couldn’t go getting sidetracked.

Instead he just stood there, staring at Terezi waiting for her to spill. It didn’t take long before she sighed and started up again.

“Look, Aradia and me totally have everything under control, so you can just go back to your little computer mixing music and totally not be bothered by anything that may or may not be going wrong right now,” she continued to insist. Dave tried to keep his face as stoic as he could as he continued trying to stare the troll down. 

She really wasn’t all that susceptible to Strider stare downs though, so the chances of it working two times in a row were slim but hey it was worth a shot at the least.

“What the fuck did you guys do?” he asked instead, not about to let this up in the least. Something was fucking wrong here and he was not gonna let it up until he knew what it was and problem was solved. He definitely wasn’t letting them leave to hellmurder island and then find the pluming spewing goop afterwards.

“We did not do anything. I mean Gamzee may or may not be unaccounted for at the present moment, but really it’s no big deal. I’m sure he’s somewhere around the hive,” she finally said, and Dave felt his stomach drop. God damn even since he first met the dude he’d had a bad feeling about him and if he was fucking on the loose he did not want to have to deal with the possible repercussions of that. 

“You lost fucking Gamzee?” he asked, hoping that he somehow had misinterpreted what she had been saying, but Terezi just kind of shrugged and scratched at the back of her head. 

“I mean, is he really lost if no one wanted him here in the first place?” she responded, and Dave wasn’t able to keep back the groan that left him.

“While I agree that that dude is totally bad news, I fucking feel it in my bones man you don’t even need to go into his history I got a six sense on this shit, that is the exact fucking reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to wander around aimlessly with people who might not know to stay the fuck away from the alien clown,” he told her, flopping down on the couch with his head in his hands. 

He’d heard bits and pieces of what had happened to the trolls, more than he would have liked to honestly. Apparently Gamzee wasn’t the sanest fucker in the universe, big surprise there, but he never let them go into too much detail. The most he would let them get out was that he’d probably killed some people. 

“You said Aradia was helping?” he asked, hoping to god that that was the truth. At the very least, she seemed to have a pretty good head on her all things considered. Cheery to the point of being unnerving sometimes but that didn’t change the fact that she was smart. 

“Yeah yeah, we’ve been searching the hivestem, but we haven’t seen anything of him so far,” she told him. Dave found himself frozen in the middle of getting out of his chair as he processed what she’d just said.

“You guys left the apartment? Like, our apartment, as in you’ve been going through the building?” he asked, frankly not surprised when Terezi nodded. She didn’t seem to understand that this wasn’t an okay thing to be doing. Jesus Christ there were probably like half a dozen people by this point who’d seen Aradia floating down the hall. 

They were leaving today. He just had to keep reminding himself that. He could totally get through this.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself before speaking again. 

“Okay, we’ll deal with that later. I’ll go out and look around outside, you two stay in here. If Bro gets home fucking hide, got it?” he told her and the girl seemingly rolled her eyes, although it was hard to tell without any pupils, and nodded.

“Don’t worry Dave we know, we won’t blow our cover in front of your Bro,” She told him. It wasn’t the most reassuring thing in the world, but he supposed it would have to do for the time being.

He managed to get a hold of Aradia before heading out, letting her know that she could cool it on searching the building and just to stick to the apartment while he headed out and looked instead. Reluctantly she had agreed, although not before suggesting that having three people searching would be much more useful than just one. Dave had to admit she was right, but fuck it was too risky that he’d end up losing them too. Then he’d have to explain to Jade when she stopped by with her magical dog that he managed to lose all three of his fucking aliens just hours before they arrived. 

Relatively certain they would stay inside, Dave started out of his apartment, immediately searching around the building and hoping the juggalo had just decided to inspect some interesting looking trashcans in the alleyway. 

Of fucking course the creepy clown alien was nowhere to be found, and the teen cursed to himself under his breath. Seriously, what was up with this shit? The dude was hard enough to find when he was inside their small as fuck apartment, how the hell was he supposed to find him when he could be anywhere in the city? 

Dave started to expand his search outward from his apartment, at least reassured by the fact that the dude would be fucking hard to miss in a crowd. Not only was he a fucking alien, but he was a tall as shit juggalo alien with big horns and clown pants. 

About an hour and a half later he’d yet to find even a trace of him and Dave felt moments away from pulling his own hair out. Fuck, he’d forgotten his phone too so he couldn’t even get on Pesterchum to check in with anyone else about how the whole god-dog plan was going. 

Reluctantly, he started back towards his apartment. Maybe there was a chance that he’d wandered his way back and would be sitting in the living room eating cheese curls or something. With Dave’s luck, fuck that could very well be the case.

Actually, with Dave’s luck he’d been in there sharing the cheese curls with Bro who would just stare at him when he came back in. 

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Not so thankfully, he wasn’t back and Terezi and Aradia told him that neither of them were able to think of anywhere he might be either. 

Dave started back towards his room, figuring he should at least check with someone to get a status update on when they were pulling operation teleport-dog and how much longer he had before having to let them know he’d lost one. 

Fuck, he just hope he hadn’t gone and killed anyone yet. That was all he asked for. 

John was the only one online at the time, and their conversation did not exactly go how he’d imagined it would. He also might not have been quite as smooth about keeping the missing troll thing an under wraps as he’d hoped. Whatever, John didn’t press him on it, and now he had fuck knows how long to find Gamzee. 

He was worried about whatever had happened to Jade of course, but he was a little caught up in his own problems at the moment to give it too much thought. The only thing he could think of that would stop this from working was her dog got hurt or something. John said it wasn’t lost or anything though, so that wasn't the case. 

“Okay, we have time to find Gamzee something went down at Jade’s and now we might have to postpone the whole island meet up thing,” he told the two troll girl’s as he came into the room. They both looked rather surprised at his announcement. 

“What happened? Is everyone alright?” Aradia asked, sounding pretty concerned. Dave shrugged, since he honestly didn’t have much of a clue. Not that John was all that good at hiding stuff, but his mind was pretty scattered at the moment, so he hadn’t managed to picked up on whatever glaringly obvious hints the kid had dropped. 

“Don’t really know, but it doesn’t have anything to do with any trolls so if you’re worried about that it’s cool. John just said that something happened and Jade’s sad and he’d have to talk to her before filling us in on the details,” he explained. Terezi nodded before jumping up off the arm of the couch she’d been seated on.

“Alright then, back to the search!” she declared, heading towards the door without any sort of hesitation. Dave nearly started following her lead for a moment before his brain decided to stop being a gullible idiot. 

“Oh hell no, stop right there Pyrope you’re not a part of this rescue operation. This mission is humans only, there ain’t no place for a troll out on those streets ya hear?” he told her. Terezi was practically pouting at him when she turned around, hands in fists on her hips. 

“Now Mr. Cool Kid, I do believe that sounds like discrimination in the workplace, and I will have none of it. Prepare to be reported to your supervisors if you don’t let us join in on this search and rescue,” she demanded. 

“I am the god damn supervisor, so you’re shit out of luck. Now stay in the apartment while I go look for the fucking clown, okay,” he commanded, walking past her as he made his way to the door. 

When he went to grab the doorknob he felt it twist in his hand on its own, and he had to take a quick jump back to prevent himself from getting hit in the face. 

“What’s motherfuckin happenin ya’ll?” Gamzee asked, standing in the doorway as Dave tried to process just what was in front of him. 

“Get the fuck in here!” he managed to get out after a moment, grabbing the taller troll’s arm and pulling him inside before slamming the door behind him. 

Terezi was doubled over in cackling laughter, weird teal tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes that she just barely managed to wipe away. Aradia seemed to be chuckling a bit too, and if Dave wasn’t the one freaking the fuck out he probably would have found he whole ‘missing person right outside the door when you go to look for them’ thing amusing. But he was the one who’d nearly had a heart attack over this whole thing so at the moment it wasn’t the slightest bit funny.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked, having to speak over Terezi’s quieting laughter. Gamzee shrugged, not seeming to realize that all of this was about him yet. 

“No where particular my brother, just stretching the motherfuckin legs a bit,” he said. Dave ran a hand through his hair, attempting to calm himself down and try to think clearly about all of this. Okay, okay the fact was he was back now so he could calm down. There was a night chance that no one was dead. At least he didn’t see any blood on the guy so that was a good sign.

“Dude, you’re supposed to be staying hidden, did you forget? You know what, we’re using the buddy system from now on, if you want to go anywhere you have to get your buddy first. We’re officially buddies now ya here, so if you’re gonna go stretching your legs again it’s not without me,” he rambled, words coming out faster than he’d wanted but Gamzee just nodded.

“Sure thing motherfucker, sounds good to me,” he said. Dave took a deep breath as he felt the panic and then anger quickly drain out from him. Jesus fuck he didn’t know how he was going to deal with this shit much longer. He sure as fuck hoped they managed to fix whatever was wrong at Jade’s soon so he could have a bit of a break from all this god damn stress. 

“Okay, okay, well now that that’s taken care of, Bro’ll be home soon so how about you guys head back up to the attic. Since the Jade thing seems to be off for today it shouldn’t that big of a problem. I’ll make sure to fill you all in when John gets back to me,” he said, and thankfully none of them put up much of a fight before heading back up. 

Dave crashed onto his couch once he locked the attic up. God fucking damn it this day had not gone how he’s originally planned it to. Really, he wasn’t sure if he could handle anything else happening after this. He just needed some time to breath for fuck’s sake.

Bro came back into the apartment not long after, giving him a slight nod before disappearing into his room. Dave considered heading back into his room as well, but instead decided on grabbing the remote and flipping channels for a while. 

The phone he’d grabbed when he went in his room to talk to John started buzzing in his pocket after he’d lazed around on the couch for about an hour, and he reluctantly pulled it out. He’d expected it to be John or Jade or one of the trolls at their respective houses messaging him to tell him what was going on. Instead, a few messages from Rose popped up on the screen.

tentacleTherapist started pestering turntechGodhead at 4:48pm  
TT: Dave.  
TT: Dave I think I have a problem.  
TT: I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.  


\---  


Bro Strider did not know what he was going to do about this. He knew what he wanted to do about it, that was an easy one. He wanted to ignore it. Completely forget that there was anything even remotely strange going on in his house, but fuck the kid was so damn obvious it was pretty much impossible. Like shit Dave basically broke before he had even stepped into the door the first day. Bro thought he had taught him better than that.

Seriously though, when he came home that day the door was ripped off its hinges, it took maybe five minutes to access the cameras Dave seemed to have attempted to delete footage off of and see exactly what had been going on before he’d arrived. 

He didn’t say anything though, because one good for Dave finally having some fucking friends besides Rose all the way in New York. Two, he wasn’t sure what he would do if he was to confront Dave. There wasn’t any audio on the tapes, he wasn’t that much of a fucking creep, but he’d overheard the kid talking to the other three several times. Not a lot of it made sense. The kids, or trolls as he’d heard Dave call them, seemed to have these weird as fuck powers and could fly and all that shit that was definitely a sort of red flag that something was so not right with this picture.

The worse thing was that a lot of it made way too much fucking sense. 

He was out of the apartment at the moment. He was trying to give the kid as much privacy as he could with all of this going on. Or, he was trying to make sure Dave thought he had as much privacy as he could. It was probably a shitty thing to do, but fuck, he was a shitty person. 

He knew he couldn’t just keep ignoring the huge as fuck elephant lumbering around his apartment forever though. He wasn’t going to kick the kids out like Dave thought he would, but hell, he had to do something if they didn’t manage to get their shit together soon. He wasn’t sure Dave even had a plan besides hiding them in their attic for all eternity, and that just wasn’t going to cut it. 

Something had to be done, and it had to be done soon. 

There was only so much he could ignore, and shit was starting to pile up. There were several very incessant voices keeping him quite aware of this fact too. He could probably ignore a lot more if it wasn’t for them nagging him.

What he was seeing in front of him right now however, he didn’t need anyone else telling him that he couldn’t ignore that shit. 

One of the troll kids was ambling down the sidewalk across the street, occasionally stopping to look into store windows before moving on. Jesus fuck how did Dave manage to fuck up this bad? Hell, no one seemed to mind the guy, a few people walked in a wide circle around him but for the most part it was taken as some shitty costume. That didn’t change the fact that the chances of Dave knowing where this dude was at the moment was slim to none. Bro was pretty sure losing the alien kids was not something he wanted to do. 

Sighing under his breath, he started crossing the street, intending to cut the kid off. He wasn’t all that sure on their names, but he knew there were two girls and a guy. The dude didn’t seem to notice as he walked towards him, and didn’t even bother to look when he was standing next to him. Instead, he just continued staring into the coffee shop he’d stopped at. 

Definitely not the most normal of places to window shop, but whatever, he didn’t judge. 

“Hey kid,” he said after a moment, finally seeming to catch the troll’s attention. He turned towards him, slight confusion on his face before giving Bro a lazy smile. 

“What’s all going on, my motherfucker?” he asked, and Bro honestly couldn’t tell if he knew who he was or not. 

“Are you supposed to be out here?” Bro said, not bothering to answer the troll's question. He wasn’t sure if he’d meant it as a legitimate one in the first place. The kid seemed to be thinking his question over, a frown forming on his face.

“I ain’t sure there my brother. All up and thinkin I was told to stay inside now that you mention it, but fuck, I don’t see no problem with getting out now and then,” he finally said. Yeah, that answer really didn’t surprise him. 

“Why don’t I show you back to the apartment before Dave or the others start to worry,” Bro suggested, and the troll’s lazy smile came back full force.

“Well motherfuck, that’d be helpful as shit my brother,” he said, and Bro just nodded as he started leading the troll back towards his house. Every so often he seemed to get distracted by something or another, but it didn’t take much to keep him moving along. 

It wasn’t long before they were back at the building, and Bro even made sure to take him to the correct apartment before disappearing again. He didn’t want what had happened to his door to be repeated on some poor unfortunate individual. 

He heard Dave yelling at the kid to get inside before he left for good, making his way up to the roof to give them some time to sort everything out before heading back inside. 

The phone in his pocket started buzzing and he immediately grabbed it without thinking. There weren’t too many people who knew his personal number, so the chances of it being something he didn’t care about at least on some level was slim to none.

hey drik  
*dirk  
looks liek we fucjed up  
take care of rosey for me please  
What are you talking about this time?  
Roxy?  
Come on, how drunk are you? Answer me already.  
sorry dirk  
Sorry for what?  
You’re not making any sense. 

Bro paced around the roof waiting for an answer, sending several more impatient messages as he did so and attempting to call twice. After twenty minutes the woman had yet to respond, and he started back down to his apartment. He passed his brother laying innocently along the couch as if he wasn’t hiding a bunch of otherworldly teenagers in their attic, but he had other things to worry about right now.

He had a very bad feeling about Roxy’s last message, and he was going to get to the bottom of this shit if it was the last thing he did.

He just really fucking hoped that it wasn’t.

\---

The next few days were not quite as easy as Rose would have hoped. Her mother had been out of the house for the most part, allowing it to not be too much of a struggle to hide the trolls. That did not mean she was gone one hundred percent of the time however. The two seadwellers were much more active at night too, when her mother was more often home. It was also rather taxing trying to stay up with them in order to make sure they were not getting into any trouble.

Despite these hurdles, it did seem that everything was going as smoothly as it could, at least for her. Both Dave and John had complained about near-misses with their respective guardians, and while Jade had better luck with keeping them hidden from her grandfather, she’d expressed frustration over dealing with the trolls several times.

Thinking of Jade, she had just finished giving her what details they had for the new plan about getting the trolls to her island. It wasn’t much, boiling down to using a magic dog to teleport them with her grandfather’s permission. They would attempt to do such in the morning, once he was awake.

She had to admit there was a bit of relief in the idea of the trolls being out of her hair soon enough, even if she had grown a bit fonder of them than she originally planned to. 

Eridan fell to her bed in a dramatic crash, and Rose decided that despite this, she would not be sheading any tears when they left, oh no. 

The troll boy didn’t say anything, instead lying there waiting for her to break first. He’d done this several times throughout the last few days, and it was rather amusing. Kanaya and Feferi both had a tendency to ignore him, and it hadn’t taken long for Rose to get the story as to why. 

Dave’s description of a murder spree was surprisingly accurate, which was hard to imagine at times with how pathetic the fish troll was. It was certainly interesting to think that he was capable of causing so much damage when he was pouting like a child. 

Kanaya was sleeping now, as she’d been up as long as Rose had, and Feferi was taking a bath in one of their many bathrooms. She had complained about having been out of the water for some time now, having not even had the chance for a while before the scratch and Rose had offered her the tub. She’d been in there for an hour now, and Rose would have been worried about her falling asleep and drowning if it wasn’t for the gills.

The girl continued using her computer, not giving the boy the satisfaction of her attention quite yet. She could feel his eyes digging into the back of her laptop, the screen positions in such a way to hide her smirk. She counted down from fifteen, reaching four before he broke.

“Come on now you know I’m here you’re just bein’ deliberately avoidant,” he whined, throwing his hands up past his horns. Rose slowly lowered the computer so that she could look at him, a look of perfect slight confusion on her face.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said smoothly.

“Don’t be playin dumb with me now, you may be a vastly inferior human but you know exactly what I’m talkin about,” he argued. He pulled his hands back down to fold them across his chest, very clearly pouting. It was a bit pathetic, especially considering how obvious it as that he was simply doing this to get attention.

“I’m sorry, it seems my vastly inferior human brain just can’t comprehend,” she teased. 

“Bullshit it can’t. Whatever, I don’t give a flippin fuck if you care or not,” he spat, turning on his side so that he was facing away from her. Rose rolled her eyes at his antics, stretching out so that her feet ended up lying casually on the troll’s side. 

“Great, fallen so low as to be used as a human footrest, it’s fuckin pitiful,” Eridan grumbled, sounding like his face was pressing into the bed muffling his voice a bit.

“Oh, how horrid your life must be, I simply can’t imagine,” Rose said, deciding to play along with his dramatics. It was late and she was tired, she needed something to keep her occupied long enough to give Feferi time to come back before she could sleep.

“You don’t even know! The misery I’ve had to go through would explode your human think pan with pity, ain’t no one in my party had to go through such tribulations,” he started to rant, turning towards her once again. Rose didn’t bother moving her feet off of their perch, and the Troll seemed to have forgotten about them as he became wrapped up in himself.

“I see, and tell me, how do all of those absolutely horrible misfortunes you’ve had to go through make you feel?” she asked, realizing the joke would go over his head. She’d expected him to start explaining in depth how he felt about all of this, but instead he just stared at her for a moment, appearing almost uncertain.

“And why would you care how I feel?” he finally asked after a moment.

“It was a joke, relax,” she said, deciding to back down before he managed to get any ideas into his head. She wasn’t entirely sure where his mind was going with that, but whatever it was she figured it’d be better to stop it before it even started. 

Eridan practically bristled at her response, turning away from her again indignantly. 

“Psh, I knew that. Don’t flatter yourself sweetheart,” he tried to brush off, and Rose just rolled her eyes and decided to let it go. 

About an hour later Feferi finally came back from her bath. By then Eridan had crawled into the closet to get some sleep. Rose hadn’t heard a word from him for about twenty minutes now, so she supposed it was safe to assume he was asleep.

He halfhearted considered asking Feferi what that whole conversation with Eridan had been about. The fish-troll seemed to know him the best, but after a moment she decided against it. It wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened by far, and she was fairly certain she could handle whatever it was on her own. 

She’d heard the slightest mentions of something called quadrants, which seemed to have something to do with relationships, but she hadn’t gotten the chance to formally ask about them yet. 

If Eridan was getting some sort of strange alien crush on her, he would have to be sorely disappointed. 

The next day her mother didn’t seem to be home, which was a relief. She was not sure how Jade’s plan was going to go down, but if it involved a large dog suddenly appearing in her living room or anything similar, she would have liked said living room to be empty at the time. 

It was barely one, so she knew that she still had a bit of time to kill before Jade would catch up with her time zone wise. 

“Rose, may I ask you about something before we are sent off to Jade’s island?” Kanaya asked her. The human turned away from her computer in order to give Kanaya her full attention. 

“Of course, what is it?” 

“Well, I’ve been thinking about how to see if there is any evidence of the game in this new universe and I believe I may have thought of something that could give us some insight,” the troll began to explain, Rose’s attention grabbed in an instant. She shut the laptop and pushed it off of her lap, no longer interested in it in the slightest. 

“And what would that be?” she asked, now very grateful for the time difference allowing her at least another hour before the trolls were set to leave. 

“That laboratory in the distance, in the previous universe it housed several game related devices. If they are still there then that would be a sure sign that the game is still in existence and a threat,” Kanaya said, and Rose nodded as she thought over the information. She really didn’t know much about the laboratory, it hadn’t been of any interest to her. 

Now however, she was trying to figure out how long it would take to get over to the building and back and if they could make it before Jade was scheduled to arrive. Probably not, honestly.

“If we head over there now, we can have Feferi and Eridan stay in case Jade shows up,” she said, thinking out loud. Kanaya nodded along in agreement however, which certainly helped Rose’s resolve in doing this. 

It would be better to head over there now while she still had someone to go with her. The plain truth was it would be extremely helpful to know if this game was still a factor in everything before they all met up. There was a chance that they would head over and it would be a normal human facility with nothing world-destroying going on, and that would be the best case scenario. 

There was a chance that wouldn’t be the case though, and that was what they needed to know. 

“We should head out if we are going to go through with this, and also let Feferi and Eridan know to come get us if they get any messages about Jade heading over,” Kanaya said, and Rose nodded as she stood up. 

They found the two trolls arguing about something in the observatory, Feferi rolling her eyes and Eridan looking flustered as they entered. 

Yeah, she just wasn’t going to ask. It wasn’t like she even had the time to right now if she had wanted to. 

“We’re heading over to the laboratory next door, we need you two to say here and contact us if Jade shows up,” Rose informed them. 

“Why are you headin over to that dump?” Eridan asked, seeming to have gotten over whatever it was they’d been fighting about. 

“We want to check to see if there is any equipment left over from the game,” Kanaya explained, Feferi grinning and clapping her hands together.

“Wow, that’s a reel-y great idea! We’ll stay here and keep a lookout for Jade!” she said, and Rose smiled in relief that the two trolls weren’t putting up any sort of fight over this.

“Thank you, also try to stay out of the way if my mother comes home,” she added on, even though she knew they’d been over this fact multiple times. She felt that was one thing she couldn’t be too careful about. They were so close to getting the trolls somewhere safe where her mother wouldn’t be an issue, she didn’t want to ruin it at the last moment. 

“Yeah, yeah, we know that already, now go before that darn witch and her barkbeast shows up,” Eridan said, causing Rose to raise an eyebrow.

“I thought I was the witch,” she commented.

“I’ll admit you are a much more respectable witch than her, but the damn game doesn’t seem to know a good thing when it sees it,” he said, not actually giving her any information besides the fact that it was a game thing. 

“We should go now,” Kanaya chimed in, and Rose agreed, turning to leave with the troll. 

The two chatted casually as they made their way through the forest, Rose trying to keep the laboratory in her sights at all times. It was a bit difficult through the trees at time, and she wondered if this would cause any trouble when they would have to go back.

“What do we do if we do end up finding something from the game?” Rose asked, watching Kanaya frown as she thought the question over. 

“Just try to prepare, I suppose. There’s not all that much you can do before the game starts, especially if one is not yet awake on Prospit or Derse,” she said after a moment. There was a sober note in her voice that picked at Rose, making her wish more than ever that she could remember what had happened. It was strange how she had started to believe the Trolls whole-heartedly about all of this. 

If this lab had items from the game inside of it, she wouldn’t have been surprised at this point. 

Rose wasn’t sure if they’d ended up getting a bit off course, or it the building was just farther away than it looked, but it took them almost forty minutes before reaching the place. When she looked at her phone, she didn’t have any messages from the two trolls back at her house, or anyone else for that matter. 

Lately, Dave would have started sending her a barrage of messages by now, but she supposed he was busy trying to get everything ready for the trolls to leave. She wasn’t worried about it at the moment, and pocketed the phone again to focus on the task at hand. 

They needed to find a way into this place. 

“I did not think this far ahead,” Rose admitted, starting to circle the building, looking out for anyone else who might be around. There weren’t any cars outside, and from all she could tell the place may as well be abandoned. 

“Neither had I, in the previously universe you had managed to access the building through an underground tunnel starting at a strange death home built for your meow-beast,” Kanaya explained. Rose found herself stopping as she tried to process this.

“Death house?” she asked as she started walking again, Kanaya nodding as if it was a normal thing.

“Yes I thought it was odd but you assured me that is a normal thing for your species to do to commemorate their deceased,” the troll said. By now the two had managed to circle the building and were around to its front. Rose started up to the large doors, figuring that trying them at least once would not hurt them any. 

She hadn’t expected them to actually open, and was surprised when they did just that.

“Well that certainly went smoother than I imagined,” Kanaya commented, Rose nodding as she started into the building. 

The lights were off, which was a relief, pointing to the idea that there really wasn’t anyone else here. The only problem was how it made it difficult to see. The troll girl seemed to notice the trouble Rose was having with this and allowed herself to start giving off light. It was certainly a handy ability. 

“So, what exactly would we be looking for here?” Rose asked, stopping to peak into the first room they had come across. It was mostly empty, the items that had been left covered in a layer of dust. It looked like it had been a simple office at one point, as did the next few rooms they looked into. None of it was locked for some reason, but there was a surprising lack of vandalism. She supposed it could be that they were rather far out, but that didn’t seem to sit well with Rose. 

“Large stations, any sort of ectobiology equipment, anything with four screens honestly. It would also probably be green,” Kanaya told her. Rose wasn’t quite sure what some of that would look like, but she supposed that it would either stand out from anything normal here or Kanaya would recognize it easily enough. 

The two made their way farther into the building, until they had managed to search the entirety of the first floor with no signs of anything suspicious. Or at least, nothing suspicious in the sense of the game, as the state of the building was still strange to Rose. At the very least, they hadn’t managed to find anything that stood out among the old offices and a decrepit computer lab. 

“So, up or down?” Rose asked, standing in front of the stairwell. 

“Let’s search the top floors first,” Kanaya said, already starting up the stairs. Rose followed her, stealing a glance at her phone as she did. They’d been out of the house for nearly an hour now, but there were still no messages from anyone. Rose couldn’t help but be a bit relieved about that, since she would hate to get pulled away from this search halfway through.

Of course, Jade would probably be willing to let them finish up, if not want to head over and help them out. She hadn’t known the girl for very long now, at least in this life, but she found that it had been easy to form a friendship with her, and the same for John. It wasn’t quite what she was used to, but she supposed she wasn’t complaining any. 

There was definitely something odd about the next floor, but not in the sense of a game for the fate of the universe. It looked like it had been a factory at some point, and Rose walked along the conveyor belts wondering what it was that had been made here. It didn’t look like it had been any sort of machinery, or else she would have thought there’d be parts left around to point in this direction. With the state that the first floor had been left in, there were still items like lamps and staplers and empty folders left around, so they hadn’t cleaned up too thoroughly before leaving. 

The other three floors heading up were the same, Rose eventually coming to the conclusion that some sort of food manufacturing had been the focus. It was more of an educated guess based off of knowledge gained from episodes of How It’s Made. 

They’d been gone for two hours now and there was still no sign of anyone online. The strangeness of that had started to slip from Rose’s mind as they continued to come up empty. It was looking like a normal abandoned factory, further confirming the idea that the game was not a factor in this universe. All they had left to search was the basement before they could say for sure if this place was no longer involved.

She wondered if Kanaya had left the basement for last for a reason. It definitely seemed like the most likely place for something suspicious to be, after all. 

“We should try to be fast and get back to the others soon,” Kanaya commented as they started down the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase was a door, and when Rose went to open it like she had with every other, she found that it wouldn’t budge.

“Well, that is certainly suspicious,” she said, taking a step back to look the door over. “You wouldn’t happen to have any idea on how to open this, would you?” she asked, turning towards the troll. Kanaya was frowning as she glared at the door, and Rose could see her hands twitch as if reaching for something that wasn’t there. She’d noticed the other do that before, and mentally filed it away as something she would have to ask about later. 

Without saying a word Kanaya rushed the door, slamming into it with her shoulder and causing it to bash open. The troll had moved so fast that Rose had barely been able to follow her with her eyes. 

“That works,” she said after a moment, moving to step over the broken remains of the door. 

It was even darker down here, a complete lack of windows leaving it solid black where Kanaya didn’t light the way. Making their way around the room, there was something different about this set up from the factory-like areas upstairs. This seemed more like a lab, with broken glass beakers littering the tabletops, one wall full of chemical hoods. 

“Does any of this look like it has to do with the game?” Rose asked, Kanaya shaking her head as she carefully stepped over the remains of a shattered flask. 

“No, it is a bit strange, but it doesn’t seem to have to do anything with sburb,” she answered, moving to the back of the room. There was another hallway, and the two started down it. This time, when she would look into the rooms they came across, they didn’t look like simple offices, but instead eerie old labs and at times disturbingly like operating rooms. 

Rose frowned as she looked into one room rather far back down the hall. It was larger than the others, with a glass pane separating a part off into what appeared to be a sort of cell. Looking through the dirty glass, she could make out a torn up bed and gashes in the walls.

“Something was kept in here,” she stated, thinking out loud. Kanaya leaned in to get a closer look, allowing for more light to seep in and give Rose a clear vision as well. The scratches appeared to be claw marks of some kind, and she could now see a few feathers around the room. She couldn’t tell if they were from some pillow that had been ripped to shreds or from whatever creature had been trapped inside. The most disturbing part of all of this was what appeared to be blood splattered lightly around. 

“I wonder why it didn’t break the glass, it seems like it was desperate to escape,” Kanaya muttered. Before Rose was able to say anything else the troll took a few steps back, running towards the old glass in the same way she had earlier with the door.

“Kanaya!” Rose yelled, trying to jump back as to avoid falling shards. When the troll hit the glass however, she simply bounced off, rubbing her shoulder and staring at the glass wall in confusion.

“That was odd, it should have broken quite easily,” she commented, and Rose just stared at her for a moment before sighing. 

“Well, do not try that again, please,” she said, deciding it was probably best for their safety to leave this room for now, starting back to the door. Kanaya glanced back towards the strange glass room before following her. Whatever was going on here, it was definitely odd and a bit disturbing, but it didn’t have to do with the game, and that’s what they were focusing on at the moment. She could try to figure out the other happenings at another time. 

They did end up finding another room like that one, with another unbreakable glass cell (Rose would have preferred if Kanaya hadn’t needed to test that out as well, but the troll was just too fast to stop once she started running). This one was much less torn up though, with the bed in relatively good shape and lacking any of the gashes in the walls. Rose would have thought that maybe it was unused if it wasn’t for the blood present on the floor as well.

The last room they happened upon caused Kanaya to stop, examining the strange machines inside. Rose couldn’t quite say what it was, but it wasn’t green and it didn’t have four screens. She couldn't say for sure, but decided to assume that it didn’t have anything to do with the game unless Kanaya told her otherwise. 

“This is strange,” the troll muttered, dusting off the front in order to get a clearer look at the buttons. 

“Do you have any idea what it is?” Rose asked, walking around and looking into a large metal tank that was attached to the object. It if had a lid at one time it was off now, but the insides were empty when she scanned it in the dim light.

“It appears similar to some of the ectobiology equipment, but it’s not quite the same,” Kanaya explained, piping Rose’s interest. 

“Do you think it’s from the game?” she asked, moving next to the troll to get a look at what she was examining as well. Kanaya frowned as she pushed some of the buttons, the machine not responding. 

“I’m not sure. It is similar in appearance, but definitely not an exact match. I can’t say for sure, but it does not have any of the symbols or a screen, which would be required if you wanted to get any paradox slime to even begin with, so I’m going to say that it is most likely not from the game, but still a strange find,” Kanaya rambled a bit before finally coming to her conclusion.

“What exactly is ectobiology? You’ve mentioned it before and it’s in John’s chumhandle, but you’ve never explained,” Rose asked, moving to press a few of the buttons only to come up empty as well. 

“It’s the process by which we were all made. Your guardians are essentially clones of themselves, and then their genetic material was mixed on order to create you and your friends,” Kanaya told her, and Rose raised her eyebrows in question. 

“Is this why Dave’s mentioned you all claiming that we are siblings?” she asked, and Kanaya nodded before stepping away from the machine. 

“That is how you explained the genetic relationship to me. We don’t have anything quite like that in our society, but you and Dave share genetic ancestors, yes,” the troll said. 

“So, if what you’re saying is correct with it being our guardians, then Dave’s brother would be both of ours father?” Rose asked, and Kanaya nodded. “That… is something,” she muttered, starting to follow the other girl out of the basement. 

Rose wasn’t entirely sure what they had found in here, but it was more likely than not that it didn’t have to do with the game. The only thing that made her doubt that was the strange machine Kanaya said reminded her of the ectobiology station, but even that seemed unlikely. 

As they went up the stairs to the first floor, Rose stole another glance at her phone. They’d been out for about three hours and it would take about another half an hour or so to get back to the house. There were still no massages from anybody, and she was tempted to message someone herself. She decided to wait until they were back at the house however, since it was easier to type on her computer and she would most likely want to tell them about the factory either way. 

At the very least, she had to tease Dave about them being siblings and his brother being his father. There was no way in his universe she was letting that one go. She doubted she did in the last one either. 

“No one’s contacted you yet?” Kanaya asked, and Rose shook her head as she pocketed the phone once again. The girl squinted into the sunlight as they left the building, trying to remember for certain which way her house was. Thankfully, she was certain she had the right way, and the two started back, talking about the stranger findings they’d happened upon.

Rose had to admit that at the very least, she would miss having Kanaya around. The girl was smart, even if she didn’t always understand everything about human life, and a good conversation partner. 

It was later than Rose thought once they got back to the house, and she was starting to get worried that something might have happened to delay their plan. The lab had distracted her, but not hearing from anyone all day was quite unusual. Adding onto that it was the day they had planned to get all of this taken care of, that was even more concerning. 

Her mother’s car was in view as they neared the house, and Rose frowned as she tried to figure out how they would get Kanaya back inside. She turned to the troll before they got too close and there was a chance of the woman looking outside and seeing the two.

“Stay out here, I’ll come and get you once mother is out of the way,” she said, now thankful that it seemed like Jade hadn’t been able to go through with the plan today. The woman had come home early and once again, she would rather the house be empty when teleporting dogs came into play.

Kanaya nodded before taking a few steps back into the woods, leaving Rose to go into the house herself. 

It was quiet when she opened the front door, making the chances of her mother having passed out and allowing for them to get Kanaya inside with little difficulty higher. 

She quietly walked around the couch, expecting to find her mother lying either on it or, as was more often the case, on the floor in front of it, asleep from too much drinking that for some reason never seemed to give her a hangover. Most likely because she was never sober long enough to get one. 

When she reached the front of the couch she felt her body freeze. It was like she was paralyzed, everything was numb and she couldn’t quite comprehend what was in front of her.

Someone was screaming.

It took a moment before she realized it was her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly plot! Suddenly guardians! Death and fun stuff continue to await us. Please let me know what you think of everything so far, and as always thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first fanfiction in nearly two years now, as well as my first for Homestuck and on this site. I started it for NaNoWriMo so I have quite a bit backlogged to allow us a pretty normal update schedule. I'm not sure what that is going to be yet, but it should be reasonable none the less. Anyway, thanks for reading and please let me know what you think.


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